Dennis Dunleavy

Nuance remains critical to emotional imagery

As a culture we have come to expect more out of the pictures we see. We are
far more visually sophisticated than previous generations.  In fact, we demand
that the images we consume each day -- many of them from advertising -- stand
out. The pictures we see, some 5,000 to 6,000 daily, actively compete for
out attention.

To make something out of nothing can lead to confusion

Photo Credit: AFP/Farooq Naeem

There are times when visual reportage gets lost when a photojournalist takes more
artistic license than convention permits. There is nothing wrong with art, but
conceptualizations that illustrate rather than report should be labeled as such.
In this image, the relationship between what is pictured and what is explained in
the caption is troublesome.

The caption reads:

Pakistani soldiers in Swat valley in February 2008. A pro-Taliban leader in Pakistan's tribal area said that Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and fugitive Taliban militant leader Mullah Omar were "not enemies of Pakistan.                                       

Not only is the caption misleading, so to is the picture. What do these soldiers have to
do with an unnamed pro-taliban leader showing support for Osama bin Laden?

In analyzing this image the photographer appears not to follow any of the normal
conventions prescribed to visually reporting the news, that is unless pinhole cameras
are making a comeback.

It is also interesting to consider how much of today's media, including wire services, feel as compelled to entertain us as they are to inform us. The logic at work here seems to suggest
that if a picture visually dynamic and able to capture a viewer's attention than it somehow fails. This does not mean that images shouldn't be carefully and artfully composed and technically
well executed, but images such as this one indicate a trend away from straight heads-up
news photography.

One interpretation of this image leads to a more aesthetic reading, something along postmodernist lines of thinking. However, that is not, in my opinion, what visual reportage has traditionally been about. The rhetorical power of such an image leans toward opinion rather than
presenting fact. What we view here is a scene that has been altered by technique to produce something more interesting than what it really is -- a group of seven soldiers near a bunker somewhere.

All images traffic in ambiguity. That is, unless you are actually witness to an event, a representation will always hold a slightly different meaning for individual viewers. In this case, the tolerance for ambiguity is constrained by the straight forwarding wording of the caption -- words that seem to have very little connection to what is represented in the image. Moreover, this image possesses strong symbolism in that the soldiers are trapped by a circular field of black.

In some ways, the image is a reminder of earlier circular images like this one from the late 1880s.

Photo Credit: Photomuse

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