Sunday 9 December 2012

Photography & Propaganda


Hans Durrer's Framing the World deals with questions that are rarely asked in texts that deal with photography and the media: Does a picture really tell more than a thousand words or is it the other way 'round that we need a thousand words to understand a picture? Is it true that seeing is believing or do we simply see what we happen to believe? Why is it that the act of closely looking, if it does not occur in a socially accepted situation, is essentially taboo? Are we condemned to see the world in a culturally conditioned way?

Framing the World argues that the mainstream media (their owners are pillors of society and not revolutionaries) are essentially propaganda instruments; it stresses the importance to not simply accept the contexts that the main news providers put on the agenda but encourages us to create our own.

Hans Durrer
Framing the World
Photography, Propaganda and the Media
Alondra Press, Houston 2011
A Nook eBook by Barnes & Noble

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hans Durrer is absolutely correct when he states that the media are essentially propagandists for their owners (and their even bigger bosses) points of view.

From personal experience I can tell you that is exactly why they have editors; folks who preview the "news" before it get aired, or printed, as the case may be.

In other words, what you see is what they have filtered for you, beforehand ~~ and before it hits the streets.

These daze ~~"There are no accidents."

Carl Frederick