The Power of the Photograph

The documentary photograph possesses the tremendous power to visualize history, to capture the movement and tensions within societies in the images which it projects. It exhibits the capability of ‘freezing history’ within the confines of the camera lens (Socialism Today 2000). Therefore, the infamous words of “A picture tells a hundred words” indeed is a very true statement. According to Kress & Van Leeuwen (2006) stated that, an image is the representation of ‘reality’. Therefore, this is essential to bear in mind.


Nowadays, most people enjoy spending their time taking photographs everywhere and at anytime in order to keep the memory of having fun with their families or friends alive. An article entitled “The power of the photograph” which was featured in The Media Report on the 4th of October 2007 reported that, Wade Goddard and Belgian businessman Frederic Hanrez developed the idea to open the war photo gallery. This photographic gallery seeks to remind people of what happened in Dubrovnik more than a decade ago, is now also occuring in other places in the world. This idea was produced with the purpose of increasing awareness of these conflicts happening in our daily lives which shows the meaning of dead women and dead children(Antony 2007). Moreover, some images you may not see in a newspaper, because oftentimes newspaper editors only select what they want you to see instead of what is actually going on.

Take a look at this picture, this image shows a boy crying and in pain because of the lost of his parents and home and is also terrified of the situation. Hence, the middle-age women look very worried and terrified and is also praying hard, hoping that the war will be end soon. The man in the picture is trying to protect the boy and the other women.


Besides that, another image as can be seen above shows the people in Dubrovnik having no place to go and no place to stay as everything was damaged by the bombings. The people are forced to live without shelter and without clean food and water. It is a very upsetting image from what happened in Dubrovnik, and these images can tell many story behind it. Hence, a picture is more impressive than words. According to Walsh (2006), an image have other effects that are different from words, particularly at affective, aesthetic and imaginative levels. The use of photos to increase a story’s effectiveness and quality are on a rise.

References:

Antony, F., 2007, The power of the photograph, The Media Report, viewed on 14 June 2010.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2051819.htm

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Socialism Today, 2000, The power of the photograph, viewed on 14 June 2010.
http://www.socialismtoday.org/50/photography.html

Walsh, M 2006, “The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts”, Australian Journal of language Literacy, vol.29, no.1, pp.24-37.