Against a bleak backdrop, U.S troops stand thrusting an American flag into the grey skies. The shards of wreckage at their feet speak of the arduous journey these soldiers had taken to reach the summit of the mountain. Despite the grim setting on the ground, the American flag waves on in a perfect manner swaying along with the wind gusts. As a photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal in 1945, this image of U.S troops raising a flag in Iwo Jima during World War II served as a symbol of hope and victory for the American public during the gruesome end to war. The photograph earned Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize, and showed the extant of the power of a photograph to elicit emotion from an audience. These emotions have the ability to affect ones’ perception towards what the photograph is depicting. However, if these photographs can produce an emotional response, is it possible for them to steer the perception of the audience in a desired direction? If so, is there a way for one to sift through the possible propaganda?
The issue of misleading photographs is present in Susan Sontag’s essay “Looking at War”. Sontag looks towards the affect a photograph has on the public. She writes that “the photographs say, this is what [war is] like” (Sontag, 141), guiding the conception of the audience who had not had the first hand experience of being on the battlefield. Photographs are able to convey a message beyond the borders of a frame; by putting words into a physical representation that one feels they can relate to. These images, according to Sontag, are “photography as shock” (Sontag, 140) and are engineered to elicit an emotional response from the audience. These shocking images are able to “show how war evacuates, shatters, breaks apart, levels the ...
... middle of paper ...
...ndividual subject in the image, and perhaps by putting themselves in their shoes, deepen their understanding of their own autonomy. Once one is able to find the application to themselves, they have successfully filtered the subjectivity of the photographer, and established their own subjectivity towards the image.
Works Cited
Corder, Joe. “Aching For a Self”. Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. Boston, MA:
Thomson Heinle, 2008. 139-144. Print.
Rosenthal, Joe. “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima”. 1945. Photogrpah.
Sontag, Susan. “Looking at War.” Writing the Essay: Art in the World, the World through Art. Ed. Darlene A Forrest, Benjamin W Stewart and Randy Martin. New York: McGraw, 2013. 139-157. Print.
Weschler, Lawrence. “Vermeer in Bosnia”. Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle, 2008. 778-785. Print.
Hicks, Patrick. "War, Literature and the Arts." War, Literature and the Arts. An International Journal of the Humanitie, n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2013. .
This art analysis will define the theme of the universality of 20th century modern warfare in the context of modern works of art by David Levinthal and Roger de la Fresnaye. David Levinthal’s “Untitled” (1972) is commentary on the mass killing of modern warfare in the 20th century, which killed many millions of men during Hitler’s invasion of Europe. Levinthal’s childhood imagery of tanks, soldiers, and homes visualize the mass killing of war as a “universal” concept in the depiction of the modern psyche. Roger de la Fresnaye’s “Artillery” (1911) is also a commentary on cubist imagery that projects a military
The Art of War. Translated by Samuel B. Griffith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963. Von Clausewitz, Carl. A. Translated and edited by Sir Michael Howard and Peter Paret.
Even visual media, which has improved remarkably over the last several decades, cannot express these feelings accurately. Today’s movies, photography and other digital media about wars are considerably more visual and realistic than in the past. They are capable of portraying events very close to reality. However, these photos and movie scenes still cannot make a person experience the exact feelings of another person who actually fought in a war.
Tim O’Brien states in his novel The Things They Carried, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat” (77). This profound statement captures not only his perspective of war from his experience in Vietnam but a collective truth about war across the ages. It is not called the art of combat without reason: this truth transcends time and can be found in the art produced and poetry written during the years of World War I. George Trakl creates beautiful images of the war in his poem “Grodek” but juxtaposes them with the harsh realities of war. Paul Nash, a World War I artist, invokes similar images in his paintings We are Making a New World and The Ypres Salient at Night. Guilaume Apollinaire’s writes about the beautiful atrocity that is war in his poem “Gala.”
This photograph, taken in 1967 in the heart of the Vietnam War Protests, depicts different ideologies about how problems can be solved. In the picture, which narrowly missed winning the Pulitzer Prize, a teen is seen poking carnations into the barrels of guns held by members of the US National Guard. This moment, captured by photographer Bernie Boston symbolizes the flower power movement. Flower power is a phrase that referred to the hippie notion of “make love not war”, and the idea that love and nonviolence, such as the growing of flowers, was a better way to heal the world than continued focus on capitalism and wars. The photograph can be analyzed through the elements of image as defined by ‘The Little Brown Handbook’ on page 86. There are a total of nine elements that contribute to the communicative quality of an image. The message that this particular image tries to convey is the strong sense of way that conflict should be handled; by way of guns or by way of flowers. The ‘way of guns’ is violence and excessive force which heavily contradicts the ‘way of flowers’ which is a more peaceful and diplomatic way of handling conflict or disagreement. This photograph depicts these ideologies through its use of emphasis, narration,point of view, arrangement, color, characterization, context and tension.
Images can manipulate many scenarios but it’s tactic used to show the realities of our world. Despite what we see, picture taken of the war and events occurring in the war doesn’t mean they aren’t real. We all live in a messy world and history is constantly repeating itself. Pictures are taken to spread awareness and empathy. It is a reason DeGhett argued that the Iraq brunt solider photograph taken by Kenneth Jarecke should have been posted in order for the public to get a sense that the war occurring at the moment is nothing like in the movies. Images are powerful and we must learn to always look closely and
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
"The Internet Classics Archive | The Art of War by Sun Tzu." The Internet Classics Archive | The Art of War by Sun Tzu. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Mar. 2014. .
Bracken, Patrick and Celia Petty (editors). Rethinking the Trauma of War. New York, NY: Save the Children Fund, Free Association Books, Ltd, 1998.
The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.
The physical effects of war overwhelm the naïve causing pain and suffering. Initially, war entangles the lives of youth, destroying the innocence that they experience as an aspect of their life. The girl “glid[ing] gracefully down the path” (1) and the boy “rid[ing] eagerly down the road” (9) have their enjoyable realities striped by the harshness of war. Likewise, war enters women’s lives creating turmoil. The woman who works “deftly in the fields” ( ) no longer is able to experience the offerings of life. The “wire cuts,” ( ) pushing her away from the normal flow of life. In addition, man undergoes tragic obstacles as a result of war. “A man walks nobly and alone” ( ) before the horrible effects of war set in on his life causing disruptions. War enters the life of man destroying the bond man shares with his beloved environment ( ).
War does leave people with all kinds of trauma as illustrated in the Bao Ninh’s short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” and Nicola Zavaglia’s documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins. When comparing the effectiveness of conveying the trauma of war towards the audiences, however, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective due to its well-developed plot and the emotional responses from the readers arising from the story.
We use pictures to develop our own views on specific events that have gone on in the world past and present. In the photograph “Napalm Girl”, Associated press Nick Ut captured a story that only him and the people in the photo would know. The picture was captured of a group of children and soldiers getting away from an accidental napalm bomb that was dropped during the Vietnam War. I am going to establish the history of the event. The issue that this photograph was editors from different media companies and all built stories to show the public that the Vietnam war was not under control. All of the newscasting and journalist headlines that were created from the photos were different. This image has drawn many people in society to believing different
Photography is defined at the art or practice of taking and processing photographs. To understand photography is having insight or good judgment to know how to take the picture, but also edit it if need be. Does photography limit our understanding of the world? What some people haven’t realized is that photography is all around us, whether it is in the person’s mind to see it or not. While we see photography throughout our daily routine, people dismiss the small types of photography and focus on the bigger sceneries like other countries beautiful cities and landscapes. It’s true that in this day and age, most photographs we see have been altered in some way. When photographers use Photoshop to edit our photos, we use many different ways to make that image appealing to the eye. Although, photographers unless told to do so will not change an image into something totally absurd that takes away from being astatically pleasing. Images are a gateway to the insight of the rest of the world’s cultures landscapes, and architecture, and photography is the key aspect to it. Photography is a one way to see the world, but it is better if you go and travel around the world to see it. In order to see if photography actually limits our understanding, we have to first look at the positive side of photography.