Dennis Dunleavy

Play by play: The social function of news images

Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Pictures have weight -- sometimes they crush. The social function of news images reside not only
in their capacity to inform, but also in their ability to entertain. In our increasingly visual culture, pictures must draw and hold the viewer's attention.  Perhaps it is for this reason that editors believe pictures must be packaged and repackaged for us.

The social function of news images is grounded in the rhetoric of persuasion. Just as a lawyer may seek to sway a jury to his or her side of an argument, a picture, through its variety of visual cues, establishes a context of understanding that shapes perception and constructs a sense of reality.

The analysis:

"Mr. Clemens" -- the subject -- the sign -- in soft-focus foregrounding leads the eye upward to a carefully framed center of Mr. Clemens. 

Pictures, as David Fleming (1996)  eloquently contends, cannot be in and of themselves seen as arguments, but inevitably they seem to be able to cause a few.

The pictures freezes, frames and fixes in our memory a moment in time that can conjure up other memories. With the stoppage of time the persuasive determinacy of the picture emerges. Pictures may be a species of rhetoric, as Susan Sontag (2003) claims, for the very real sense that they appear before us as rational and orderly entities of time.

In this case, Clemens' testimony before Congress on steroid use may bring to mind other high-profile hearings such as in Iran-Contra with Oliver North or Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas'  appointment to the Supreme Court.  The low camera angle is iconic in that it produces  a recognizable perception in which the subject is made to appear larger-than-life.

The camera angle is not trivial or a trick since it modifies our sense of a normal eye-line match. In other words, speaking in terms of grammar, the camera angle acts like an adverb -- it modifies the subject.  Further, the sign, in this case, "Mr. Clemens,"  is indexical and points toward formality, courtesy and solemnity. The gesture is wholly symbolic. Clemens' look away from those questioning him, his raised hand suggesting defense.  In addition, the essential framing of Clemens with his pseudo-archangelic lawyers. The gestures of  Clemens' lawyers speak  louder than words. Here we have the million-dollar pitcher in the proverbial "hot seat" and is million-dollar lawyers act as his intellectual bodyguards.

As mentioned earlier, news images function to both inform and entertain, but the real objective of making pictures is to make us think. Any object in the world, and pictures are objects, that can make us think about bigger ideas and issues can't be all that bad.  We shouldn't have to settle for someone else's interpretation of the world if what is represented only serves to reinforce a status quo. The ultimate objective of a news image should not only be to serve us a preconceived packaged reality, but to wrestle with convention and conscience.

The evidence:

Recently, this point was brought home on the Magnum photo site when Christopher Anderson's bare-bulb approach to photographing presidential candidate Mitt Romney came under fire from some viewers.  Anderson's approach was the "anti-photo op." Tired of making the same stale and banal images that most of the press pack gets of the candidates, Anderson blasted Romney through what appears to be a rain-splattered lens.


Click to go to Magnum's Picture of the Week

In his defense Anderson commented:

These events are rather ridiculous. they are staged and repetitive....It was a conscious decision to flash with this technique. It is as if throwing too much light on it might somehow expose these campaign photo ops for what the really are. The designers of these events want us to make a pretty picture. but a pretty picture to me felt like something that would be false to this event. I almost thought of the flash as being like an xray that would reveal what I really see at an event like this.

Anderson brings up one of the biggest challenges faces photojournalism today -- mediocrity. If news images do not seek to edify they run risk of becoming nothing more than someone else's spin. What we are tasked with here is to understand the relationship between the art of making news pictures and the larger implications of how these pictures function in society.

Pictures, Memories and Emotions

There is little doubt that pictures affect how we not only understand the world around us, but also how we feel about it. I have been wrestling with coming to terms with the relationship between pictures and memory. I think there is a connection between what we see and what we remember. It is the memories that are stirred up by a picture that trigger emotion. In turn, emotion is closely associated with beliefs, values and norms. From our beliefs we begin to act toward something. Since pictures can be emotionally charged objects, the individual processes feelings both subjectively and objectively.

I am thinking of John Moore's image of a man reacting to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In the image, the man's outward expression of shock and disbelief is carefully framed symmetrically, with a tangle of mangled bodies on the ground behind him. If an image could sum up the emotion of grief, this one would do well. There is little ambiguity about this image, despite attempts by mainstream broadcast media to blur out the bloody bodies.

What memories does this image trigger for us?

Photo Credit: John Moore/Getty Images

Susan Sontag, in Regarding the Pain of Others, observes, "It seems that the appetite for showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked." Memories of the collapse of the World Trade Center and a century of countless images of calamities from around the globe come to mind. Memories, as Sontag suggests, alter the image, according to memory's need to confer emblematic status on things we feel worthy of remembering. The emotions associated with images depicting emotion are complex.  We may feel shame, fear, anxiety, disgust, anger, sadness, and remorse. But there is also another side to emotional control -- one that conjures up relief that such events as the Bhutto assassination do not occur in our neighborhood. There may also be feelings of alienation, disconnection and disbelief. Here we find the image to activate a memory-emotion-belief cycle. This cycle assumes   that for someone to experience an emotional response to an image there must be some value belief system behind it. We feel, because we believe in larger, more abstract and symbolic constructs, than physical pain. Belief systems underpin our emotional responses to the images we see. The norms and values we hold for ourselves and others are constructed by the cultural norms we share. We are taught that violence is wrong, yet wars and killing remain a reality. Images of violence do not seem to deter us. Media, from video games to Hollywood films continue to celebrate the objectification and degradation of the human body and spirit. How, then, could one picture -- such as the one John Moore has made -- move us from the belief that violence is wrong to a call for action?

This is a morally complex question since many people might argue that there is little or no connection between what we see and what we end up doing about what we see. At the same time, I believe that cultural norms are in a state of constant negotiation between the essential self and the social self. If more people took the time to reflect upon the values held closest to the center of who they think they are, the essential self, then, the possibility of changing our social self would emerge. The social self is the outward expression of who we present ourselves to be in our every day life -- who we think other people think we are. If we are truly moved in our essential self by an image to act, then our social self will change.

One way to think about the tensions between the essential and the social self is to consider symbolic behaviors. In Moore's picture, despite cultural, ethnic and religious differences, the symbolic behavior of grief and horror is clear to us. Pictures, as a visual language, transfer  symbolic behaviors across the cultural and linguistic barriers that often divide us. At the same time,  we remain divided and disharmonious species.

Unfortunately, the habitual ways we are conditioned to respond to violent image influences  our capacity to separate reality from fantasy and fiction. Our habituated ways of seeing, understanding, and acting, also impinge on our ability to respond emotionally to images depicting violence and suffering. Pictures are indeed a form of agency, they goad us to think and act out of the feelings that they conjure up for us. But our visual culture has become so saturated with such pictures that the capacity for images of violence to shock is diminished. As Sontag contends:

"Making suffering loom larger; by globalizing it, may spur people to feel they ought to 'care' more; It also invites them to feel that the sufferings and misfortunes are too vast, too irrevocable, too epic to be much changed by any local political intervention."

We live in a world where sentiment and emotion is exploited by external forces. How much control do we really have over our feelings? From this perspective, images desensitize our capacity for compassion. In this way our memories appear to fail us as we can longer distinguish between  essential experiences and socially constructed realities.

Caught: Can apologies excuse bad judgment?

It's more than ironic that the flap over Golfweek's controversial race-bating cover would fall around the same time our nation takes a moment to remember civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Despite the suspension of a Golf Channel announcer who made a racist comment on air, as well as the sacking of the Golfweek editor who approved the illustration above, nothing seems to escape the fact that our predominantly white-controlled media remains, at times, clueless when it comes to reproducing offensive stereotypes. Playing fast and loose with stereotypes, and in this case a visual metaphor, only serves to remind us how much work we need to do in order to come to terms with our legacy of cruelty and inhumanity toward blacks and peoples of color in this country. 

From a Piercean semiotic perspective, it is possible to see  the relationship between icon, index, and symbol in action as they construct meaning. The icon, a swinging noose, points toward a powerful symbol -- one that resonates memory and emotion. The visual language operates through symbolic action -- pictures trigger emotion, and emotions trigger beliefs. This explains some of the failings of Golfweek's editorial process. The editors knew they were working with a powerful symbol by selecting a noose to illustrate the TV commentator's lynching remarks, but they failed to make the deeper connections between the symbol, the emotions this symbol conjures up for people, and the belief systems behind the emotions.

I wonder what Dr. King would have to say about the controversy?

Clearly some strides toward reconcile and reform have been made since Dr. King's day, but the sad truth is that we still have a lot work to do in understanding just how powerful words and images are in shaping public perception and constructing our social reality.

Photo-Op: Bush and the Irony of a Can of Beans

Photo Credit: Jason Reed/Reuters

This picture reminds me of one of those famous credit card commercials:

The scene: A food bank in Anywhere, USA
Roll Camera: The President, with a sour expression, stands before the camera.
Voice Over: The melodious baritone voice of the announcer comes in.

• Oxxford hand-tailored suit: $2,000 - $14,000
• Haircut: $30 - $60
• Bush's Best Beans: $1.59
• Cost of the War in Iraq:  $200 million a day

The Irony of a Presidential Photo-Op: Priceless

Is the president really mugging for the camera with a can of beans? Could the visual metaphor be any more perfect at this time of year? 

As Americans prepare to gobble up more than 1.6 billion pounds of turkey, 1 billion pounds of pumpkin, and more than 800,000 tons of beans this Thanksgiving, the photo-op signifies what appears to be another surreal moment for the Bush presidency.

While, Bush symbolically pardoned the White House turkey this week while more than 35 million Americans, including 12.6 million children, will experience hunger. Further, more than 38 million Americans will be eligible to receive Food Stamps. In 2006, The U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that requests for emergency food assistance increase by 7 percent across the country.

There is a significant different between how images denote and connote meaning. As cultural theorist Stuart Hall suggests, pictures are encoded with symbolic meaning. But it is ultimately up to the viewer to "unpack" or decode what the symbols mean. Much of this decoding is determined by context, convention, as well as the disposition of the viewer. Ultimately, the ability to make sense of a picture becomes contingent upon how that picture resonates in every day life for the viewer.  For me, the expression "full of beans" comes to mind. Originally,  "full of beans" originally meant to be full of energy and high spirits, but over time the phrase has come to represent something more akin to someone who is being less than genuine or honest -- basically someone who is "full of it."

Ultimately, any analysis of this sort probably won't amount a "hill of beans."

Nevertheless, pictures should provoke thoughts, and in turn, hopefully, thoughts will lead to action.

 

The Dark Arts: Photography in the age of algorithms and the new realities of digital manipulation

Credit: Carnegie Mellon Graphics

Photography and the Dark Arts? Look out Harry Potter.

James Hays and Jexei Efros are really smart people. Hays and Efros, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon, report they have invented a whole new way of patching up pictures by "borrowing" pieces of other pictures from the web. They call the method "scene completion", but others will differ them, especially when it comes to how the "scene" gets completed -- by taking content from other pictures off the web.

Credit: Carnegie Mellon Graphics 
Scene Completion Using Millions of Photographs

By using the data base of the World Web, with millions of images to pick from, Hays and Efros, have figured out that they can splice slices of reality in a seamless process that differ from previous methods.

The interesting point here is how science, which seeks to solve a problem, often complicates and creates even more problems.

 

As the image engineers explain:

"Our chief insight is that while the space of images is effectively infinite, the space of semantically differentiable scenes is actually not that large. For many image completion tasks we are able to find similar scenes which contain image fragments that will convincingly complete the image. Our algorithm is entirely data-driven, requiring no annotations or labeling by the user. Unlike existing image completion methods, our algorithm can generate a diverse set of image completions and we allow users to select among them.  We demonstrate the superiority of our algorithm over existing image completion approaches."

To their credit, Hays and Efros, have just moved electronic photo manipulation to a whole new level -- they have given the photo industry a bigger gun in which to pass off composites, fakes, and illustrations as wondrous illusions of reality. Not that photography hasn't been dealing with these issues since its inception. It is just that this new process contributes to already growing ways in which digital shenanigans get passed off as "truthful" representations of reality. I can see the Pentagon, politicians, advertising industry, and even more conventional mainstream news operations clamoring for the software.  It's all part of the slippery slope of image production in the 21th Century.

Not only are the possibilities of digital manipulation so much greater with this process, there is also the very big question as to what will constitute copyright infringement. Even if Hays and Efros use 1/1,000,000 th of a picture made by someone else, even if they borrow a few pixels here and there without asking permission or paying the owner for that 1/1,000,000th, would they be infringing on someone's copyright? What is fair use when there's a program out scanning images on the web in order to make a whole new image? 

It should not come as no great surprise that science would eventually figure out a way to semantically and seamlessly reconstruct images. We already have these processes in place.

However, the implications of this new method add fuel to the already burning argument that pictures could never be trusted as faithful reflections of reality. What you get is not what was seen, but rather only a few pixels here and there of possibly millions of other images.

Thanks to Daniel Sato for the inspiration and the link.

Sell newspapers, pictures, and legs

What do leggy women, newspapers, and sexual attraction have in common?

Editor & Publisher, the newspaper industry's leading trade publication, may need a little sensitivity training these days after people concerned with the objectification of women take a look at their latest promotion.

In an announcement for a photo contest, the organization ran an ad (see above) that can read in several different ways. Signification is the process of making sense of the things we see by interrogating the visual cues and associations represented. What we have here are faceless women, sets of legs, and newspapers without pictures.

The image is accompanied by the headline, "Papers without pictures just aren't very sexy." The associations implied suggest a relationship between newspaper photos, women and sex. We can assume that the people who approved such an advertisement were probably male, although it is hard to say with any assurance.

The emotional war within: Listening to pictures of pain and suffering

How much of what we know about the human costs of war do we let in to impact us in profound ways?

Although there are remarkable and powerful images of war to remind us of the unthinkable horrors human beings continue to suffer, it appears that for the most part we rarely truly learn from them.

Although we appear fascinated by the sacrifice people endure for a cause, noble or ignoble, most of  the pictures that remind us of those sacrifices seem all about ignored.

The pictures we see of dead and wounded civilians and soliders in times of conflict become social artifacts that may or may not stir our emotions or move us to action.

In recent times, we have seen how Joe Rosenthal's picture of a band of Marines raising a flag on a tiny island in the Pacific could mobilize millions of Americans in the war effort during WWII.

Photo Credit: Joseph Rosenthal/World Wide Photos/AP

 

Later, we have seen how another  image could have just the opposite affect, as Nick Ut's picture of a young girl running naked down a road after she was burned in an aerial attack on her village by the South Vietnamese Air Force, with U.S. support.

 

Photo Credit: Nick Ut/AP

 

Images such as those by Rosenthal and Ut remain embedded in our collective consciousness because of how often they are repeated and recollected in our visual culture. When we speak of patriotism and sacrifice, or, of so-called the "good war", the Iwo Jima flag raising image seems to always come to the forefront of our common discourse. When we speak of atrocities and failed U.S. foreign policy, so too, do we find referencing the incident at Trang Bang, Vietnam, where a little girl and nations were changed forever. 

Recently, a photographer in Southern Illinois has made an image, or a series of images, that should become emblematic of what critics are beginning to call the current quagmire in Iraq. 

  Photo Credit: Nina Berman/Redux

The picture by Nina Berman of Redux, is a wedding portrait of a Marine who had been burned over much of his body. Although badly disfigured from a bomb blast in Iraq, his facial features all but melted away to bone, Ty Ziegel lives to tell his story to the world.

The picture, as simple as a picture can be, makes us want to listen. The picture makes us cry out in empathy, muster hope in the presence of such incredible human spirit and strength, or simply cringe in disgust. In the end, however, it is the couples resolve that makes us want to listen.

In a recent article in Salon.com, photographer Berman suggests, "What makes pictures interesting is that they provide the space for the viewers to contemplate."

Contemplation is a form of listening to our innermost feelings about the things we see.  Contemplation, if given  space,  moves us to act on our feelings. To contemplate the explicit and implicit meaning of Berman's image means to imagine our own lives transformed by war as Ty Ziegel's life has been.

Thomas  Merton, the Trappist monk and writer, once observed that  "True contemplation is inseparable from life and from the dynamism of life--which includes work, creation, production, fruitfulness, and above all love. "

Merton continues:

"Contemplation is not to be thought of as a separate department of life, cut off from all man's other interests and superseding them. It is the very fullness of a fully integrated life. It is the crown of life and all life's activities."

Berman's wedding portrait has received acclaim in photojournalism. In fact, it won top honors in the portrait category of the World Press Photo competition this year. But it is not the picture, as an object or artifact, that should be admired and remembered. What should be contemplated here, first and foremost, is that the judges recognize the saliency and value of the content within the frame.  The space Berman speaks of here moves beyond the rancor of congressional debates and presidential pomposity. The space Berman speaks of  gets to the core of some of the most essential qualities of being human -- love, loyalty, hope, and reconciliation.   Can a picture evoke the "big" ideas expressed here? Apparently so.

How will history remember Ty Ziegel's wedding picture? How could this   unassuming portrait of a wedding couple become the next Iwo Jima or Trang Bang in the collective memory of wars past and present?

What distinguishes the pictures is less a matter of aesthetics and more a more of politics. For the Iwo Jima picture the U.S. government adopted the image as mass marketed it as the embodiment of the "good war." In the case of the Trang Bang picture, the anti-war movement of the 1970s embraced  symbolism of the moment as proof of the so-called "dirty little war."

Pictures, in iconic terms, extend beyond the meaning of occurrences in several ways. Iconic pictures, such as the hooded prisoner of Abu Ghraib, signify ideological bench marks in history -- turning points -- in the cultural  memory of  American society.

It is only through the assimilation of an ideological benchmark image into our visual culture as a form of a larger societal discourse that an iconic permanance can emerge. Although the Berman image has been seen now by ten of thousands of web-watchers, it will not be until we see the picture on billboards, war posters, and TV screens that its status as an iconic image will endure as a product of social consciousness. 

Is this the future of journalism?: Associated Press to collaborate with citizen journalism Website

 

On Friday, the Associated Press announced it will be working with PublicNow.com to expand access to news as it happens. PublicNow has a membership base of more than 60,000 citizen journalists in 140 countries, while the AP remains the world's largest news gathering operation with more than 4,000 employees.

Potentially the partnership could revolutionize mass media by doing away with the boundaries between amateur and professional content production. It will be interesting to see how PublicNow contributors understand and comply with the conventions, standards, and ethics of mainstream journalistic practice.

According to Managing Editor for Multimedia Lou Ferrera:

"In the early stages of the relationship, AP bureaus will work with NowPublic communities in selected locations on ways to enhance regional news coverage. National AP news desks also may tap the network in breaking news situations where citizen contributors may capture critical information and images. NowPublic also will help AP extend its coverage of virtual communities, such as social networks and contributed content sites."

The collaboration, however, seems to signify a trend in the industry to capture competition for content in an already content-saturated media environment. A few months ago, Yahoo and Reuters joined forces by inviting citizen shutterbugs to submit images of breaking news events.

Although the merger of professional and citizen-sourced content is inevitable in an age of instant communication, the road ahead may be a bit bumpy for an industry already struggling to maintain credibility and public trust.

As images and events continue to flood into the newsrooms of AP, Reuters, and other organization from citizen-sources, what is to prevent public relations firms and the government from trying to make propaganda appear more legitimate. If I worked for a company that wanted to get on the news wires to sell a product or brand a name, I would be thinking really hard right now how to take advantage of the collaborative trends.

Already, news seems so saturated with an array of pseudo-events that stretch the definition of what constitutes relevant and significant information. 

Ultimately, wire services and Websites will be challenged to ensure that citizen-sourced media is legitimate and credible. At the same time,  maybe the prevailing public perception of mass media as a trustworthy source of information is so low, that it won't really make much of a difference. 

Michael Tippett founder of PublicNow.com write in a recent post about the Anna Nicole Smith notes that many people are becoming concerned that the news is increasingly sensationalist and celebrity driven.

What really struck home was Tippett's comment on how news has changed in recent years.

"Where news goes wrong is when it goes from being the messenger to being the message. Where people get bored is when news produces celebrity instead of reporting on it."

Intimacy: the highest level of emotional attachment in an image

Photo by Dennis Dunleavy (1995)

What makes some images more emotionally appealing and persuasive than others?

One way of understanding how images evoke feelings is by understanding the concept of intimacy.  Intimate images create a feelings of being, closeness, and belonging.

Although we commonly associate intimacy  with person-to-person relationships, the connections we make with an object, such as a photograph, may have produce similar feelings.

Joe Elbert, picture editor for the Washington Post, once categorized pictures as ranging from "informational" at the lowest end of the scale to "intimate" at the highest. But Elbert doesn't elaborate conclusively on the exact definition of an "intimate" image. "I can't give you a description of an intimate picture; it's something that can be felt," Elbert notes.

What this suggests is viewing, as a highly selective and potentially emotional process, connects the ways of seeing with ways of making things seen though meaning and interpretation.

Viewing assumes people apply perceptual filters to thing seen. This also suggests a state of consciousness. A perceptual filter refers to how personal perceptions and judgments bias our understanding of what we see. In writing about self-esteem and recovery, James Henman contends:

We experience the world through filters that have a profound effect on how we feel. These filters are made up of our underlying assumptions and beliefs about reality, our attitudes toward ourselves and others, our past experiences, our current expectations and how we process all of this information.

The perceptual filters we use to interpret an image may also be deeply connected to the store of memories we call upon when seeing.  In the process of viewing, memories and experiences are recalled and compared to the new object. Ultimately, an intimate image breaks through the barriers of personal prejudice,  and judgment by connecting to memories or universal feelings we hold inside ourselves.

 

Photo by Karla Gachet

Psychologist Joel Bennett observes, "A relationship has meaning when seen and lived in a broader temporal context."

What Bennett suggests here is that people experience time multi-dimensionally through the past, presence, and future. The feelings of intimacy evoked in an image, then, help to provide a broader context in which we experience life.  In this way, the photographer is challenged to create pictures that resonate on a higher level -- one that connects with a viewer's needs and desires beyond a informational context.

What technical, compositional, and content considerations are needed for understanding how intimate images are created?

 

Photo by Dennis Dunleavy (2004)

 

First and foremost, the intensity and direction of light becomes a dynamic factor in evoking feelings in an image. Softer and indirect light may evoke empathy in viewing an image. When we are drawn into a frame through  the use of softer more painterly tones, the possibility of creating stronger connections with the needs, feelings, problems, and views of others emerges.  This does not mean, however, that is not possible to have intimate images with hard and direct light, but the difference may be more the equivalent of a whisper over a shout or scream.

Ultimately, the relationship between the subject and the light captured in a frame becomes increasingly more critical in the ability to produce empathic and intimate images.

 

The intelligent observer

How much of what we see do we really understand or even try to make sense of?

The answer to this question lies in developing the skill of intelligent observation.

Artist and philospher Frederick Franck noted, "We have become addicted to merely looking at things and beings. The more we regress from seeing to looking at the world—through the ever-more-perfected machinery of viewfinders, TV tubes, VCRs, microscopes, stereoscopes—the less we see, the more numbed we become to the joy and the pain of being alive, and the further estranged we become from ourselves and all others.”

The art of observation begins with immersing ourselves in the textures and tones of life. Observation requires us to immerse ourselves in looking and listening without passing judgment on the impressions we collect.

Observation as part of the communicative process is about acknowledging the value of relationships between things that will provide a context for the experiences we have. Sense of place refers to making connections to the impressions we collect. Journalists are not mechanics fixing broken parts. Rather, journalists are storytellers communicating about what it is like to be in the world.

It is through details and context and a sense of place that photojournalists can create images of impact.

Human beings are dependent upon the senses for the impressions we hold of the world around us. We rely on our senses for survival – sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. However, as we develop and refine our craft, there is a tendency to favor one sense over another.

The key to becoming stronger storytellers, through words and images, is to work with all our senses to remember the impressions we experience and collect. As photojournalist we must learn to observe without judging, without letting thought intrude between you and the object. When you see a sunset or a landscape and say, “How beautiful,” you are not immersed in it, and will notice only part of what you might otherwise have seen.

In order to communicate messages effectively or express ourselves fully we have to think about what it means to be an observer. However, we must aknowledge the paradox in the acts of seeing and being seen. In our increasingly visual culture, we are both the observer and observed, the seer and the seen. What could this possibly mean? Are there any consequences implied in the act of observing or of being observed?

Dictionaries offer various meanings for the word “observation” including:

To perceive or notice
To watch attentively
To make a systematic or scientific observation
To watch or be present without participating actively.

Howerver, the observational skills we used in photojournalism suggest the active engagement of all our sensing powers.

The world is a sensual place: we see, hear, feel, smell and taste so that on a number of sensory levels we engage ourselves. Think of the moment you woke up this morning. What were the things you felt, sensed, perceived, and eventually responded? Was it the light coming through a window, the sound of traffic on the street, or the smell of coffee in the air?

Most of the time, I walk through my days unaware of all that is going on around me, out of touch with how I am being affected by what I sense. When I finally slow down to really take in space, sounds, sights, smells, texture and tone, my experiences with that space change. I feel more fully engaged. Observation teaches us to be this way in the world and to have empathy for the things we see and photograph.

There is a clear distinction between looking at something, seeing and observing. Observation is about allowing yourself to become sensitized to the things you are seeing. In other words, observation is about sensitive seeing.

As photographers we are drawn to light and the shape of things. We compose images as we think they might be in our heads and then with our cameras. How many times have we looked at our images and said to ourselves that is not what I saw, that is not what I felt? Becoming a sensitized observer means more than passive seeing––it means entering into a relationship and engagement with the things we see. Observation is experiencing what we see and translating that experience through the words and images that come to us.

How many images of war, famine, natural disaster, poverty, or any other extreme of the human condition have we seen in our lifetimes? I am thinking now of Kevin Carter’s image from Africa of a starving infant with a vulture nearby waiting for death to come.

How many other images like this one have I seen but not been moved or touched by in some way?

Our newspapers, television screens, websites, magazines and books are flooded with such icons of depravity and horror. Observation is part of a process of perception which engages all of your senses, sound, smell, taste, touch, and sight. When you acquire the skills of an observer you will also learn the value of waiting and anticipation. This is important to remember because there are no easy ways to learn how to be careful observers of the world around us. There is no mathematical formula, master plan, blue print or recipe for learning how to see and experience the things we choose to see.

Observation begins with both subconscious and conscious states of begin. We enter a space, connect with, pay attention to, and open ourselves to the hidden dramas of life that otherwise we let slip past us.

In the chaos and confusion of life we are trained from an early age on to focus almost entirely on the outcome of our efforts. No pain no gain. Life in our advanced capitalist consumer-centric society is measured in outcomes: material possessions, wealth, class, status, highest level of education attained, etc. With so much emphasis on producing outcomes in our art or in our daily life we have lost the ability to clearly discern the quality of incomes. We might refer to “incomes” as all those subtle and understated attributes which contribute to the outcomes we produce.

Observation helps us to explore and evaluate the things we are drawn to. As photographers we are moved by an array of ways of knowing the world and experiencing it. We place ourselves in the path of the present to make sense of the path and to glimpse the future. We become aware of space and time in an attempt to capture it, fix it, brand it, and preserve it. This is what an image does––it holds time and space in an illusionary dimension of the two as if it were somehow real. Beneath the surface of this temporal spatial relationship a continuum emerges through our memory of the likeness we view before us.
Observation is a skill we must develop if we want to engage in the world beyond the mere looking at it through a lens.

The images we create of our reality arise through observation and contemplation. Many, many times we fail to capture what we believe to be the essence, understanding, or truth of what we observe through photography on the first attempt. Perhaps this is because what we looking at first, what we glimpse is only a suggestion of something deeper, more profound and more meaningful.

As Franck reminds us there is always “the glaring contrast between seeing and looking-at the world around us is immense; it is fateful. Everything in our society seems to conspire against our inborn human gift of seeing."

Ultimately, learning to observe people, places, and activities in the world can make us better storytellers, communicators, writers and photographers.

Tortured realities: The camera phone comes of age

The potential of the camera phone image to speak truth to power cannot be underestimated. As James Fallows observes, "History is driven by ideas and passions, and by unforeseeable events....History is also driven by science and technology."

When technology slams headlong into inhumane and unjustice acts, people begin to take notice. Today, we are on the verge of a digital revolution with the emergence of cell phone technologies -- one that can be seen as a positive force used to promote democracy or one that may eventually be used to destroy it.

Pictures from Abu Ghraib of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners,the  tsunami disaster, the subway bombings in London, the execution of Saddam Hussein, the massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines  in Haditha, and more recently the photographs of Egyptian police torturing suspects suggests the emergence of a hyper-mediated surveillance society.

The motivation to photograph atrocities by the perpetrators, such as in Abu Ghraib prison, Haditha, and in Egypt indicates how people in positions of power and control blindly operate by a code of conduct that is beyond any law -- human or devine. The soldiers and police making these images possess a sense superiority and impunity toward those they deem to be the enemy.  The  pictures they make may be made as evidence, entertain, or propaganda.

When 21-year-old Egytian minibus driver Imad Kabir was hung upside down and sodomized, his torturers recorded the proceedings with a camera phone and then transmitted the video to the Kabir's co- workers as a warning. The pictures eventually made their way onto the Internet and two police offers were jailed in the incident.

Originally conceived as an act of oppression against those opposing the government's authority, the Egyptian camera phone images reveal the often rumored and insidious truth about the mistreatment of prisoners. It is extremely difficult for any government to deny such cases of abuse when the evidence appears so indisputable.

The camera phone images we have seen in recent years are glimpses of a world we have heard about but have seldom seen.  Images of atrocity and abuse, revealing the darkest side of humanity, speak truth to power as history unfolds before our eyes.

A sign for the times

Photo Credit: AP/WTMJ-AM

It shouldn't come as a great surprise that the upcoming midterm election is generating some interesting responses from critics on all sides of the political spectrum. Some U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq entered the limelight today as they took a swipe at John Kerry's recent criticism of the Bush Administration's policy on the war.

From one perspective, this banner not only represents a form of free expression it is also a political attack advertisement that is sure to be picked up by Republicans as they seek to find further means to discredit Democrats.

It's curious that both military commanders and the media view the soldiers' message as more humor and less about politics. However, if people read behind the joke, the implications are far more serious.

It would be interesting to see how military command as well as the  media would react if the soldiers were criticizing George Bush in this way instead of John Kerry. No joke.

When Iconic Images Become Meaningless

I read a provocative article this morning from Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick concerning the Abu Ghraib prison images -- pictures that once stung the conscience of this nation, and that now have lost their sting.

Lithwick writes with remarkable clarity when she argues that "Yesterday's disgrace is today's ordinary, and that—with a little time and a little help from the media—we can normalize almost anything in the span of a few short years."

In fact, the passage of the president's detainee bill in the Senate will put into law, and make legal, what horrfied so many in the pictures only three years ago.

Remember those incredibly real pictures of naked and humiliated prisoners being the subject of torture? Remember the dog attacking a terrified Iraqi or the guard pulling a prisoner along with a leash around his neck?

What has happened to the power of an image as its becomes stuffed into the recesses of memory? Why do these pictures no longer make us cry or scream with outrage?

With time pictures -- especially iconic images -- come to mean different things for different people. Take the Abu Ghraib prison pictures for example. What these images may mean to many Americans three years later is quite different than what they mean to al Queda operatives seeking new recruits in Iraq.

Terror has a funny way of creeping into popular culture -- just ask Jack Bauer, a.k.a Mr. Torture, of the hit television series "24". Americans have  an freakish fascination with pain and humiliation, especially when it enters the fertile imagination through film, television, and video games.

Photography as ritual: Part 2

The photograph exists in the world as a real object.

The idea that we can hold on to experiences through the fixing of a moment in time as a photograph is compelling. The act of making images is ritualized by patterns of behaviors.

The social functions of a photograph are diverse and numerous. The social function of the photograph  performs a variety of personal and social needs including the need, to inform, evident, validate, entertain, criticize, report, illuminate, or instruct.

Photography can become a ritualized activity because many of the processes that go into the making of a picture appear automatic and second nature.

At the same time, we shouldn't confuse how the term ritual as primarily been connected to religious ceremony. In this context, we are extending the original ideas about ritual to extend to daily life.

Ever since the Kodak One camera in the late 1800s,  the visual behavior associated with making images have become part of every day life – with one hand we reach for a Kleenex to wipe the tears from our eyes, while with the other hand we reach for a camera to record the moment. There is no denying the emotional associations that move us to document moments in time.

For Catherine Bell (1992),  A ritual may be “described as particularly thoughtless action -- routinized, habitual, obsessive, or mimetic-and therefore the purely formal, secondary, and mere physical expression of logically prior ideas.” In photography, ritual refers primarily to those activities that become embedded in all stages of the picture making process including, pre-visualization, interaction with subjects, composition, technical considerations, image capture, and post-production.

Thinking of photography as an activity guided by embedded ritual -- the interaction between photographer and subject, pose, gesture,  shot, another pose, another shot, edit, presentation – all suggests  patterns of behavior that govern expectations and obligations in the process.

Photographic ritual create conditions of knowing and being.

All of the expectations and obligations associated with the making of a picture illustrate the ritualized nature of photography.

When I make a picture, I expect it to come out, be of reasonably high quality, capture a moment that is meaningful to me, and represent what I am looking at accurately. Therefore, there are certain routines I engage in to make sure that my expectations are met.

In terms of obligation, most of what I feel toward my subject comes through the picture I make. I feel obligated to make a picture that the subject will be happy with (this is in a personal context, not necessarily in a photojournalistic context). I feel obligated to build a rapport with the person I am photographing that honors the individual when possible.

Photography as ritual: Part 1

A Japanese couple, their bride's maid, and photographer, walk through an afternoon rainstorm on the shore of Lake Louise in Canada's Banff National Park yesterday.

Ritualized activities are deeply embedded in human behavior. Although originally used to describe a religious or solemn ceremony, the term ritual today has taken on broader meanings. For the past 150 years, the photograph has played a critical role in creating and maintaining social interactions.

Rituals consist of both technical and social considerations that govern attitudes and behaviors in front of as well as behind the lens of the camera.

Social relationships between photojournalists and subjects constitute a complex symbolic universe of visual rituals. According to Erving Goffman (1967) rituals impinge “upon the individual in two general ways: directly, as obligations, establishing how he is morally constrained to conduct himself; indirectly, as expectations, establishing how others are morally bound to act in regard to him” (p. 49). 

Goffman's ideas are important to consider at a time when photography is undergoing increasing scrutiny and reflection. In photography, extending Goffman’s model of interaction ritual to human visual behavior provides a richer context for evaluating professional conduct and ethical behavior.

Social relationships between photographer and subject are constantly mediated by the expectations and obligations of the individuals involved in the interaction.

Digital photography changes the dynamics of social interaction and human experience in many ways. Among the most obvious dynamics emerging from the use of digital photography is ability to review and share images immediately after capture. Photography may still be a "get-what-you-see" process" but digital photography allows for immediate and repeated corrective processes that were unavailable with film photography.

The rituals in digital photography extend the potential of social interaction beyond what we have been familiar with in film photography. Photographic digital rituals, however, remain situated within cultural practices that symbolically reorganize sensory experience.

The picture still fixes a moment in time, but digital photography appears to extenuate and expand on social rituals both in the capturing of the image as well as in post production processes.

The characteristics of digital photography eliminate sequences in the ritual process of image production. With digital photography the traditional “liminal” period of the latent image—one that transforms the subject into a negative and then back into a positive print—is altered.

Symbolically, the liminal period granted the photojournalist a greater degree of autonomy from the subject. Anthropologist and artist David Tomas (1982) describes this process as the “rite of separation” which is marked by the boundaries of  “electromechanical mediation and optical-chemical consequences” (p. 8).

Historically, the ceremonial ritual of separation in photography consisted of two distinct rites, the capture of an image in a viewfinder followed by processing and development in the darkroom. Therefore, the symbolic transformations of reality occurring between the subject, photojournalist and viewer correspond to face-to-face interaction rituals on one hand, and optical-chemical processes on the other hand.

The ritual interactions of social relationships formed by the use of the digital camera may be very similar to those encountered with users of the SX-70 Polaroid camera. With the elimination of the liminal period in digital photography the ritualized interaction of separation between the photographer and subject also changes.

As previously noted, this dynamic imposes some challenges to the photographer’s epistemic autonomy in capturing and processing images.

Open season on photojournalism: Critics have a field day

It's open season on photojournalism these days, and critics are having a field day destroying the integrity of a profession grounded in truth-telling and ethical behavior.

No matter the degree of the infraction, photojournalism, and by association, mass media, is feeling the heat.

Jim Lewis’ scathing critique of photojournalism in Slate.com holds newsgathering organizations to task for the recent spate of problems -- problems ranging from digital manipulation to the staging of news pictures. 

It’s not that these issues have never existed before, but the frequency of the transgressions have placed a profession, photojournalism, under great scrutiny.

The problem with Lewis’ self-indulgent photobash is that he spends a lot of time repeating what others have been saying for some time now. His language is vindictive, which may lead a lot of photojournalists to flat out dismiss his arguments.

Nevertheless, it is worth spending a little time reflecting on some of Lewis’ ideas.

Lewis notes:

It’s beginning to look as if every major institution that prints photos has printed doctored or manipulated photos: Time and Newsweek, the New York Times and USA Today, Harvard University and Science magazine, and the 2004 Bush campaign…. all of them undermine the public's trust in the reality of photographs. And so much the better, because that trust is badly misplaced.

What, after all, do we believe when we believe that a photograph is true?

Susan Sontag, in Regarding the Pain of Others, examines the question: “Who are the ‘WE’” at which pictures are aimed.

This is what comes to mind when Lewis frames the "we" perspective in his analysis.

When it comes to looking at pictures depicting the suffering and pain of others, Sontag reminds us, the “WE” should never be taken for granted (p.7).

There seems to be no denying that the notion of a collective “WE” has changed from the days of our fathers, grandfathers, and forefathers.

For many, the idea of a united “WE” seems inextricably bound to the creation of an US and a THEM. The photographs and words seen and read in newspapers and magazines reaffirm a “WE” that attempts to create the illusion of consensus (Sontag, p.6).

What appears so bothersome to many observers about the recent photo manipulation of burning buildings in Beirut is that manufacture of the “WE” was so poorly executed.

Why did the photographer feel compelled to make the damage appear worse than it was? 

Perhaps the photographer, Adnan Hajj, believed that making the damage appear worse is what his patrons (be it Reuters or Hezbollah) wanted the viewers to see?  This is the imaginary "WE" that operates in the background of human consciousness.

Hajj’s manipulations are failed attempts at constructing a societal “WE”. He just did it really poorly.

The pictures were manipulated to emphasize the US against THEM commonsense viewpoint. The pictures are meant to agitate and solicit empathy, but they are also reiterate mythology (David and Goliath), or peddle an underdog ideology.

Hajj’s picture threatened to pull the curtain back on the ways people perceive the conflict just like TOTO in exposing the all-too-humanness of the less than all-powerful Wizard of Oz.

Bloggers, just like little TOTO, pulled the curtain back on the vulnerability of constructing and peddling one particular truth about the conflict. 

In the political endgames that come with all war, any visual truth  must be suspect, be it by the photographer or a government with an ideology to sell.

The camera may mimic reality but it is the photographer and the viewer that must negotiate the truth that emerges.

The “WE” that is constructed as an image of this war is but part of a larger pretense – something that goads the audience to believe in one view of the experience -- one perspective of reality -- one carefully crafted truth. 

Lewis’ question – “What, after all, do we believe when we believe that a photograph is true?”

Lewis’ question is a taunt -- a wordsmith's turn of a phrase.

Ultimately, there is no such animal as a photographic truth. 

Horrible things happen in the world everyday and there are photographers who record them, but the truth is only believable if we use to make it so.   

Cloning Lebanon in Context

Here is the photo that has led to a storm of controversy in mass media world, especially in the blogosphere.

According to the BBC, "The news agency Reuters has withdrawn from sale 920 pictures taken by a photographer [adnan hajj],after finding he had doctored two images taken in Lebanon."

Click here to take a survey on photo manipulation.

Despite the reaction and response to the recent manipulation of a Reuters image, many people are missing an important issue.

Over the past few decades the MSM has come to depend on outsourcing many of its most dangerous reporting assignments to in-country freelancers -- people who take far more risks, are paid less, far less educated, and far more likely to be treated like disposable commodities than their Western colleagues.

The big picture issue here is more about the political-economics of doing business in times of war, than it is about one person's journalistic integrity. Let's get this straight. 

One of the most important issues facing the media today is credibility, yet Western wire services continue to utilize labor practices that exploit people.

Shouldn't wire services and the editors who work for them be held as equally accountable to the public as the photographer?

What needs to be discussed here is the reality that our wire services  exploit freelancers who end up assuming all the risk of working in extremely dangerous situations. Consider for a moment the number of Iraqi journalists, many of them working for Western news agencies, that have died in the past four years. In-country photojournalists, be it in Iraq or Lebanon, risk their lives every day so that we can be better informed.

The reality of the situation is that these freelancers are typically paid far less than Western photojournalists, become targets of political reprisals, and are rarely covered by any sort of health insurance policy.

In this case, even if the freelancer is fired and all his or her pictures removed from circulation, the wire services will inevitably hire another freelancer with the same language, cultural, and technological skills to take his place.

Firing the freelancer is a knee-jerk, sort of "cover our butts", reaction to a even more insidious situation that has been overlooked in the industry for decades. Outsourcing what is the equivalent of photo-mercenaries in order to save money and Western lives.

Freelancers need the same training, pay, educational opportunities, and health coverage as any other human being needs in this sort of situation. However, all of this costs money, and the bottom line in the news business these days is pretty much do news fast and do news cheap.

The message that Reuters is sending to the public by firing the freelancer is that they can be counted on to take care of individuals who make them look bad. I feel a deep sense of sadness for the freelancer who probably didn't even know that he was doing anything wrong in the first place.

What needs to the discussed here is the bigger and meatier issue of  how the wire services out source the most dangerous and difficult assignment to freelancers who are more or less treated like a disposable commodity.

Even though Reuters publicly apologized for the picture that got out, where were editors who cleared the image for distribution?  In this case, a first-grader could have done a better cloning job on the image, and at the end of the day it is the editors, not just the photographer, that have failed us. What we need now is an honest discussion about the use of in-country hires and freelancers by media giant who exploit them in order to feed the beast that our insatiable appetite for images in this country has become.

We should not, in this case, be shooting the messenger (the freelancer), but rather the companies that fail to educate their content providers in understanding the importance of balanced, fair-minded, and ethical visual practices.

Transcoding Lebanon:Photographic meaning from one form of coded representation to another

More than 100 newspaper front pages across the United States today visually re-presented Sunday's bombing in Lebanon with only a handful of the same images.  At the same time, 150 others newspapers opted not to use pictures to explain the situation.

There are a few pictures that have emerged as emblematic of the incident. An image of a rescue worker removing the body of a child recovered from the rubble of a building hit by an air strike was used prominently on the fronts of  27 newspapers, while  11 newspapers illustrated the violence by using an image of an angry Hezbollah supporter smashing a large glass window at the main United Nations building in Beirut. Other pictures, such as a man grieving near a pile of bodies, or a rescue worker peering out from the rubble were used less frequently.  Why is it that in a sea of images, only a handful embed themselves in our collective memories.

Only a handful of pictures, mostly showing rescues, signified the news today. A few papers ran images of Israeli troops, but most opted for pictures related to the destruction of the apartment building.

The symbolism captured in these images is fallible. Any interpretation is subject to the fallibility of personal beliefs, emotions, and consciousness. Yet, the fact that someone else is mediating my visual experience leaves me skeptical. Only direct experience is infallible and it is up to me to trust what I am seeing as "real."

Despite the attention paid to how images construct reality for us, we remain dependent on them for meaning. Some newspapers choose to illustrate sympathetically, through the victim's eyes. Others choose to take a more oppositional approach -- one that plays upon our fears with images of retribution and anger.

Why do we need images to fix a moment in time and to mark the passage of an event? Deep within the human pysche symbolism is the language of the soul. In order to make sense of the world through symbolism we must consume objects of desire and fear. Within the photograph is the logic of consumption. We are a culture that communicates through the pictures we create and consume. We learn to see ourselves in the frame, even if the people and objects appear foreign to us at first.

Despite the fallibility of receiving messages implicitly and indirectly we are held captive to our imaginations.

Lebanon Burning: What's Next?

The question of “What Next Lebanon?” was answered just hours after editors at the Washington Post wrote the headline and selected a signifying moment to accompany it for Sunday's paper. However, the “what’s next” has already happened – death and more death, mostly civilians, and mostly children.  Fifty-six people.

It is Sunday afternoon and the news reports from Lebanon are increasingly grim. As I write this post, I imagine the photo and news editors at many of the nation’s newspapers shifting through the hundreds of pictures being transmitted back by satellite across the planet. I imagine how one or two pictures will come to signify what is being reported as the bloodiest day in the two-weeks of fighting being Hezbollah and Israel.

But here we are stuck with the larger rhetorical question -- "What next Lebanon?" and its visual referent. More than 60 years ago, Alfred North Whitehead observed that symbolism is fallible, whereas direct experience is infallible. Yet, we cannot escape the symbolism embedded in words and images of war.

Symbolism is fallible because it works within a system of notions. As Whitehead contends, symbolism can induce actions, feelings, emotions, and beliefs about things.

"The human mind is functioning symbolically when some components of its experience elicit consciousness, beliefs, emotions, and usages, respecting other components of its experience."

The photographer is positioned in such a way as to maximize experience so that the symbolism is both explicitly and implicitly caught in a fragment of time. In Lebanon the symbolism of a devasted urban landscape is often juxtaposed in the Western media against the symbolism of Israeli artillery wrapped in smoke. In Lebanon, a lone figure negotiates his or her way through an agonized frame of twisted, smoldering metal. The symbolic, however, is socially and culturally constructed and must therefore be learned to make any sense.

The symbolism of "What Next Lebanon" anchors in our mind an image of the past, present, and future. We read through the literal nature of the picture presented to us to make inferences and associations. This is the way our mind works. We have a catalog of images in our memory banks to draw on -- Kosovo, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Haiti, El Salvador, and this latest picture of Lebanon burning no longer surprises or shocks us.

Questioning the "commonsense" of news photographs

In a one-two punch of emotion and despair, the insane and unjust reality of war hit home in yesterday's New York Times. Look carefully at the juxtaposing forces of signification on display in the full-page reproduction, left, and then move in for a closer study of the signified on the right.   

How is it possible to fully understand the power of images? How can one poignant moment compare to another?

In our class Sex, Violence and Visual Culture this summer at Southern Oregon University we have started analyzing images from a social semiotic perspective. Social semiotics can be a useful in evaluating the meanings by questioning "commonsense" views of the world. By understanding what we see, as Jack Solomon observes, commonsense views of the world become "habitual opinions and perspectives of the tribe."

Using this approach, we examine the social and cultural constructions of reality that are presented to us as "commonsense" news. In his book "Signs of the Times," Solomon reminds us that cultures conceal ideologies as something made to appear natural.

Although tempted to understand the potential of seeing as limitless we are still very much constrained by the accumulation of social and cultural taboos, myths, filters, and semiotic codes.

Signs are codes imbued with meaning that help us function in the world. For example, traffic lights are sign systems that convey meaning through colors to organize the chaos of driving down a street – green (go), yellow (warning), red (stop).

Words are signs within a system of language. One person may call Iraqi insurgents “freedom fighters”, while others label them “terrorists”.  Meanings become embedded in our cultural and collective memory through repetition and recall.

There is much to explore in the juxtaposition of the two images on the front of The New York Times in terms of how reality is filtered, screened, and coded for us. The Israeli soldiers grieving for a fallen comrade in the picture above symbolizes more than the death of a combatant. The picture signifies a turning point in the conflict that is supported by headlines and text. We perceive the violence that this image re-presents for us as a cultural barometer – something Solomon contends marks, “the dynamic moment of social history.”

The violence of the conflict becomes filtered through a lens of what "naturally" follows conflict -- death and destruction. Prehaps the commonsense view I am resisting here is that the picture pleads with me to accept the consequences of a war that will not be resolved by the rhetoric of peace accords and cease-fires.

This point of view becomes even more important as my eyes move downward to see a Palestinian man buried a baby. We can see her tiny face framed by the traditional burial shroud. We can see the face of the man lowering the body to rest. The man is wearing a T-shirt with the words (another sign) selling T-Mobile… and we stop to pause for a second. We reflect on the meanings of these images – the dead baby and the man in the T-Mobile shirt.

Now, this is only one possible reading out of many, and this is the point of what happens in the signifying process. What we need to remember is that the meaning of an object does not reside in the object itself but in the interactions and discourse surrounding it. Many people may make little of the connection between how the child died and the man with the T-Mobile shirt. At the same time, others see the coincidence as a strange juxtaposition of contrasting ideas.

How do we learn to teach ourselves to question the “commonsense” view of what we are presented with as news?

The picture presents me with a puzzle of conflicting signifiers -- The dead baby and the T-shirt promoting high technology. I must work to decode the separate meanings and then somehow pull them together to construct a deeper understanding of the unsettling realities. I must work, therefore, to decode the "commonsense" and naturalize view of a world that becomes filtered through a system of signs legitimized as news.

"Globalization is often celebrated as an advance of human freedom in which individuals are ever freer to lead fives of their own choosing. Transnational flows of money, goods, and ideas, it is argued, will accompany an increasingly liberal international order in which individuals can participate in a global economy and culture."

David Singh Grewal, Network Power and Globalization, Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 17, 2003.

Dyadic relationships such as signifier and signified produce meaning as a sign.

Signifer = object
Signified = meaning
---------------------
Together, the signifier and the signified produce a sign.

baby in death shroud = signified
------------------------
dead baby killed by Israeli forces = signified

Taken together I interpret the meaning of what I see as
Civilian casualities as a sign of conflict.

At the same time, another layer of signification is added to the process as we evaluate the meaning of the man's T-shirt within the context of the conflict.