Washington Post Staff Writer Philip Kennicott raises some interesting points when he attempts to understand the power of the presidential photo-op.
In the article Kennicott notes:
"Photographs of the president (any president, since Reagan, at least) are among the most manipulated and crafted images in our society. Are photographers too easily complicit in the crafting of these pictures? Does the natural quest for beauty by photographers make them unwitting propagandists?"
The answers to these question seem so obvious.
Yes and No.
Yes, photographers are too easily manipulated in the hyper-spin world of presidential image making. Photographers are handled by professionals who know how to set up a shot to make their politician look good. It is all about image.
Yes, photographers are susceptible to manipulation by the image-makers, but do they have much of a choice? These sorts of images are less about the photographer's sense of aesthetics and more about how well the presidential image-makers can control the visual outcome of an event. Pictures speak volumes.
If even a president's words fail him, the image coming across the television screen or the photograph on the front page ultimately wins out.
What choice to photographers really have in covering dog and pony shows when all of the elements -- people, location, background, signage, and lighting remain outside of their control?
Kennicott supports this ideas when he writes, "given the ground rules for taking photographs, they [photographers] have little choice. And to intentionally subvert the intended political message is itself an intrusion on straight journalistic truth-telling..."
Often, given the ground rules for taking photographs, they have little choice. And to intentionally subvert the intended political message is itself an intrusion on straight journalistic truth-telling,
If the media complained to the White House that they were feeling manipulated by the way in which presidential photo-ops were being staged they may fear retribution in having their credentials pulled. The media play by the rules of the game, and the presidential image-makers own the rule book. Here's why:
- The presidential image-makers control access to the event and determine who gets in.
- The presidential image-makers tell photographers where to stand to make their pictures.
- The presidential image-makers often herd the media into pens hours before the start of an event for security reasons.
- The presidential image-makers control the angles that photographs can be made from.
- The presidential image-makers control the distance or focal length that photographs are made from.
The visual results of such endeavors for image-makers must be predictable. That's what they are do -- package and sell messages.
For presidential image-makers, the pseudo-event is far more concerned with the science of winning hearts and minds than it is about creating art.
So, are photographers unwitting propagandists? No. Making these sorts of images is a little like delivering the mail. Photographers shoot, for the most part, what people expect them to shoot.
I wrote about the Photo-Prop/Photo-Op effect last year at about this time, when the New York Times deviated from the norm by running a wide angle shot of President Bush at a press conference. Many of the newspapers, however, selected a wire image that showed a close-up of President Bush with the presidential seal framed nicely behind his head like a halo.
I think these two newspaper front pages do a nice job illustrating how lens choice combined with a photographer's intentions can frame the meaning of what is mediated for public visual consumption. All to often, media criticism fails to focus on the relationship between framing and meaning through visual variety, lighting, focal point, and other considerations.
If we are looking for reasons why the public distrusts the media these days perhaps we should step back a bit to consider how the news is socially constructed for us under the pretense of journalistic values such as fairness, balance, accuracy, and objectivity.