The Power of Photography

In 2007, ABC News (2007) reported on a European war photo gallery in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was built to commemorate the invasion here by the Serbians in the 1990s. Here, curator, Wade Goddard commented the importance of the war gallery and its photographs.

He even quoted:

The photographer was there, he was the one that was one the ground; he was the one on the frontline, he was the one that felt, smelt and touched the story. It's him that I trust. Whereas in the media, we have editors, publishers, who are sitting at their desks with their own political or ideological views of telling the story.

Parallel with his comments, the viewers of the photos are feel included and impacted in the scene. Hence, it is clear that a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps millions. 

Source: Stolenchildhood.net

Source: foxnews.com 

Source: Scrapetv.com 

This article, therefore, shows the importance of photography in document designing. First of all, photography provides multimodality and salience to its viewers, as creates the hierarchy of importance among elements (Kress and van Luuren, 1998). Being a high element of salience, photographs are able to channel and captivate the feel and within the atmosphere on the moments of catastrophe, creating fear and sadness among viewers, as described by Wade Goddard. 


However, despite the power of photojournalism, unethical media bias may occur as it is able to mislead and misinform the audiences when their men are covering their stories. For example, Zombietime.com (2009) tells how a picture that depicts an offensive Communist-planned anti-war protest into a grassroot activist's peace march by showing a few angles on the coverage. News nowadays still tell the truth, but not the whole truth, according to the author. Hence, an analytical mind is needed when it comes to watch news. 

Source: Realworldphotographs.com

Besides, this is another bias photograph that was captured during the Israel-Palestine conflict. Biased journalism occurs as people begin to lose their trusts on mainstream media that serves a particular ideology. They should have notice that photographs can captivate the essence and beauty of a culture, or to defame it to increase your stereotype towards it (Berardo, 2007). 


At the end of the day, it's all about the ethical use of photography. Journalists should pay more attention of their photos which will speak either a thousand words of fact, or lies to the audiences, while abiding by their own true role as watchdogs of society. 


References: 


ABC News, 2007, "The Power Of The Photograph", viewed June 15, 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2051819.html> 


Berardo, L 2007, "The Power of Photography", viewed June 15, 2010, <http://www.culturosity.com/articles/powerofphotography.htm> 

•Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 1998. “Front pages: The critical analysis of newspaper layout”,  Blackwell, Oxford. 

Zombietime.com, 2009, "
Anatomy of a Photograph: An analysis of a single seemingly innocuous photograph, and the pervasive media bias it reveals, viewed June 15, 2010, <http://zombietime.com/sf_rally_september_24_2005/anatomy_of_a_photograph/>