Washington Post cultural writer Philip Kennicott responded to an email I sent him regarding his article "Finding and Angle in Every Shot." I was interested in getting more of his insight on presidential photo ops and photo props.
Kennicott comments :
From conversations with photographers, I know that they are very restricted in where they can set up, and that they often complain that pictures that don't look like what the handlers were hoping for can lead to subtle pressure, and not so subtle pressure.
Photographers generally have to get on the list for big events, and they can find themselves not on that list. Newspapers are desperate for high impact front page images, and that too may tend to pull out of the field those images that have more beauty than truth in them. After awhile, when the partisan rancor has faded, we also tend to rather like those images, I suppose. Think of the iconic shots of the Reagan presidency. They're pretty much accepted as truthful images today, rather than constructed images.
Kennicott's ideas bring home something I have been considering for a long time. How do the things we see become normalized in society? In this case, the deluge of visually mediated messages people are subjected to in our society turns shock and disdain into banality and routine. The stagecraft of the White House has become part of our visual diet. All the careful staging, lighting, positioning, props, and backgrounds placed around the president to non-verbally communicate a message or set a tone go unnoticed by most of us. As Kennicott noted, the Reagan administration mastered the art of media stagecraft, and in doing so has set the standard for future leaders.
So much of what we see is so overtly and obviously superficial, cosmetic, artificial-- so much of our visual culture has become over-the-top propaganda and advertising.
Now the question is, what can anyone do about it? How can we train ourselves to see through what has become the theatre of power politics?
If we reduce the substantive ideas of our times to photo ops and sound bites our ability to make real decisions about our future is subordinated by visual hyperbolics -- cheap tricks and treats for the eye.