A Picture's Worth a Thousand Likes

Andrea Robinson

ar195815@ohio.edu

 

Sure, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but are we finding more value in its likability? It seems to be that viral pictures or more likable ones are most important in today's culture. What if this means we are giving up some of the truth? 

Picture source: https://9gag.com/gag/aGZwooZ

Depending on the camera angle, I guess you could say Prince William "flipping the bird" in a crowd is fake news. Without the photo on the right, whose to say it isn't. 

Don't get me wrong; photography is essential to news, especially when it comes to be proof of an event. A picture becomes an eye-witness with the click of a camera. Photographs get to describe history in ways that words can't. 

The power a single photo can possess is potentially dangerous. It has full control to shape the reality of its viewer. 

In a blog post written by Laura Curtis, she discusses how news photographs construct reality. Curtis says this is partially because photojournalist only capture a small moment in time, but not the scene in its entirety.

Not physically being in the moment makes it hard to understand the truth, so we rely on the photos to tell us what is going on. Having only that one small moment, is like only reading one chapter of a book. There's way more to the story, and I'm sure it's way more than a thousand words. 

"They (photojournalist) try to visually report the realities that reflect the place they are in, but all photographs are in some way altered, in most cases this comes down to a simple cropping go the image". 

Picture source: https://noonecares.me/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/media-manipulation-004.jpg

Most photos hold some truth...but not the whole truth.

It may be deceptive and naive to believe most of the images that are frequently present in the news and social media are always going to be the whole reality. We are not always being shown the bigger picture (literally). 

Sometimes more harsher offenses than cropping a photo happen in photography. 

In 1994, TIME Magazine had an altered image of O.J. Simpson on the cover. It was a darken version of Simpson's mug shot. This issue was published in the midst of the widely covered murder trial. Another magazine, Newsweek, also blasted newsstands with the same notorious mug shot, but seemed to leave the photo untouched. 

Picture source: https://people.southwestern.edu/~bednarb/su_netWorks/projects/enyioha/O.J.Simpson.html

TIME received a lot of push back and many deemed the cover to be distasteful. This triggered backlash due to racism. 

"Some anecdotal evidence suggest that whites have particularly negative stereotypes about darker-skinned blacks, such as the darkening of O.J. Simpson's face". 

Other critics thought that the image was darkened to make him seem evil to further reinforce the lack of favorability toward black people. 

Many photos are framed in certain ways to accumulate the most reaction or even the most likes. It's hard to know where to begin with reality when so very little of it is being shown. 

How can we make our own thoughts when we are unsure what reality to believe? As humans, are we too gullible to look past the more appealing or alluring photos?