Conflict and violence have always had a significant presence in media circulation. Newspaper publishers and politicians, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer (1998) are both attributed with popularising the phrase, “if it bleeds, it leads”, in reference to their prioritisation of graphic media to sensationalise and dramatise the Spanish-American War (1998). The limitations of 1890s media circulation enabled Hearst and Pulitzer to foster a narrative focused on the horrific nature of the atrocities being committed by the Spanish in Cuba. With this being widely considered the first “media-war”, audiences were more engaged and receptive to the reporting of the conflict, allowing them to steer a public reaction of a demand for US intervention and war.
Before even conventional modern forms of media circulation like newspapers, narratives were being formed through depiction of conflict. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem, “Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854), presented readers with a narrative of heroic tragedy
Images in and of themself
Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else, they haunt us
the photographer intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it
photographs of the victims of war are themselves a species of rhetoric. They reiterate. The simplify. They agitate. The create the illusion of consensus.
if we could do something about what the images show, we might not care as much about these issues
photographs are a means of making real matters that the privileged and the merely safe might prefer to ignore.
to suffer is one thing, another is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate.
Photographs can abet desire - a photograph that brings news of some unsuspected zone of misery cannot make a dent in public opinion unless there is an appropriate context of feeling and attitude.
photographs cannot create a moral position but they can reinforce one–and can help build a nascent one.
photographs shock insofar as they show something novel. Unfortunately the ante keeps getting raised
Images anesthetize
after repeated exposure to images it also becomes less real. (mention pornography)
like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. it is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power.
even when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tactic imperatives of taste and conscience
Photographs furnish evidence
a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective interpretation