on "Image, War, Legacy"

The Chapter on image, War, Legacy begins with the assertion that images throughout our recent history have been divorced from its content and used to gain political advantage on the world stage which seems to resemble more and more a Hollywood set. From the photogenic John F. Kennedy to the hijackers of the 9-11 tragedy, political forces are using images to promote their causes and agendas in the vein of the Hollywood leading man or action stunt film. Perhaps our worst export to the rest of the globe is this insatiable desire for shameless self-promotion through the medium of image. The camera is always on us and we must behave according to the image we want to portray for ourselves to the wider world. What is even perhaps equally distressing is that in our so called post modern era, the play on the surface of signs allows us to make any assertion about "reality" to fit our needs: to look like a hipster, a student, or athlete; to wage war on the premise of ridding the world of dictators and their "weapons of mass destruction." These "pseudo realities," as Ritchin calls them, become the cultural narratives that define how we interact with each other and the world outside of our country. Despite the horrors of reality we can create our own feel good story about how "everything is going to be just fine.
Photography and photographers are also complicit in the political institution's promotion of pseudo realities. Either by being excluded from certain conflicts or being tightly controlled in what they can or cannot show, photographers (journalists and documentarians) are more often than not the unwitting record keepers of the institutional forces that they are reporting on; they now work to promote the preconceptions of the respected news outlets, U.S. Military, major corporations and non-governmental organizations to name a few. Perhaps the greatest danger in my eyes is what Ritchin mentions is a growing skepticism in the American public. We approach our news not to learn the truth but to be entertained because we are skeptical of all the images presented to us. I fear that we suspect that everyone has a hidden agenda and so we are more prone to ignore some information while devaluing the sense of objectivity in others. But perhaps this is not such a terrible turn of events, as Ritchin seems to suggest. Perhaps this skepticism, if it does not turn into cynicism, is helpful in thoughtfully locating the hidden agendas behind the images we are bombarded with. It just takes a little bit of time and media literacy education. What a strange world we live in.