Morris, from what I understood, talks a lot about photos being objective. If someone says it's a photo of the Lusitania we more or less believe it. However, once we hear the backstory of what happened to the Lusitania we look at the same exact photo in a different way.
I agree with this. I usually don't question photos but then again, I'm not a journalist so I'm not really looking at them for a story. My family isn't big on family photos so I've never really looked at an old photo and questioned whose in it. Also, since I live with my parents, if I do look at a photo I can always ask my mom or dad who the people are and they'll give me a plethora of information I hardly want.
I do think it's subjective though. If a National Geographic photographer takes a picture of a tree they think is cool and caption it "the very beautifully colored ferifjr tree" a scientist might look at that same photo and be like, "no, that's simply a mango tree." This is even more prominent in religious examples. A christian might post a photo captioned, "the holy cross" where an atheist might just see it as "a plus sign." It all depends on someones beliefs. In this sense I do agree with Morris.
The backstory definitely changes the way I look at photos. I tend to look at photos before reading stories. A very recent example, I saw a photo of Oscar Pistorious and his girlfriend and thought awwww, what a cute couple. I later read that he killed her and it went from a cute photo to a horrifying one instantly.
Anything on The Onion is practically an example of this. With everything they write being bogus it's easy to find an incorrect caption.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/vacationing-detective-just-going-to-pretend-like-h,31355/
This is the current top story on the onion. They don't put the captions below the photo so I just took the headline and used it saying "Vacationing Detective Just Going To Pretend Like He Didn't Even See Dead Body In The Woods," and assumed the man in the photo is the detective. It states the man didn't see a dead body. This is just some random man who has nothing to do with a dead body. However, look at the photo and read the headline and immediately we have negative thoughts about this man. The caption changes the way we view the photo.
Anything on The Onion is practically an example of this. With everything they write being bogus it's easy to find an incorrect caption.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/vacationing-detective-just-going-to-pretend-like-h,31355/
This is the current top story on the onion. They don't put the captions below the photo so I just took the headline and used it saying "Vacationing Detective Just Going To Pretend Like He Didn't Even See Dead Body In The Woods," and assumed the man in the photo is the detective. It states the man didn't see a dead body. This is just some random man who has nothing to do with a dead body. However, look at the photo and read the headline and immediately we have negative thoughts about this man. The caption changes the way we view the photo.
I like how you address the fact that viewing a photo can be tinted by each person's beliefs. You examples are very clear and help show the point you are trying to make. I think that you make a valid argument to the fact that we need more information before we can simply judge a photo, since that is what we normally tend to do. I also like that you used the example of Oscar Pistorious since that is a news story I have been following the past few days.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your examples. especially the picture of Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend one shocked me. I mean who would think that "the guy in the picture must kill the other girl"? unless their is a caption about it. You explain well how a caption of a photo can be not only facts but also opinionated.
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