Monday, November 15, 2010

untitled

Shekhar Deshpande has written an article about how National Geographic Magazine attempts to portray foreign countries to the “western eye” and how a good image/photograph becomes more important than the actual problems surrounding it in “The Confident Gaze”. Deshpande claims “this power to transform the most repulsive results of human actions around the world into images that digestible is what makes for the culture of National Geographic.” (Deshpande 2) The essence of Deshpande’s claim is that National Geographic Magazine is able to transform images that are not the most appealing but the photographers are able to show the less “repulsive” aspects of a photograph and instead emphasize the more appealing features to appeal to the western eye. Deshpande also states in his article “Human suffering becomes worth a good image.” (Deshpande 2) Deshpande believes that photography is very important in America and images are very powerful. To get a good photo, if human suffering (such as poverty, famine, natural disaster) is a part of a quality image, then human suffering is acceptable to those who take it. I believe that National Geographic magazine does a pretty legit job of photographing the world and the inhabitants of it. This magazine gives us a window to other places around the world and I think this is a very cool and amazing tool which we have.

No comments:

Post a Comment