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Oppression Of Truth In Patterson's Barriers To Seeing

Decent Essays

A world without photography seems merely impossible to the modern age humans. Photography is seen throughout our everyday lives, from the television, to smartphones, and on our computers, it seems impossible to avoid it. But why would we want to? Photography is a vision, a memory, a moment captured in time that makes it possible for humans to share these moments with others. But more than times than not, these moments, visions, photographs are altered, manipulated, and distorted to influence, and change the audience’s view. By analyzing the many methods the photographer’s ways of manipulating, altering, and the distortion of the truth of their works, one can conclude that not everything shown is accurate and often overlooked by the …show more content…

The photographer has the power to capture only what they would like to show, often not showing the unfamiliarity of the subject, but only how they are familiar with it. In Freeman Patterson’s, Barriers to Seeing, he incorporates a quote spoken by Frederick Franck that expresses, “By these labels we recognize everything, and no longer see anything. We know the labels on the bottles, but never taste the wine.” This suggests that photographers capture only what they are familiar with, that leads to a photo without unfamiliarity and truth. The distortion of truth is also seen in the removal of valuable parts of the photo to manipulate the viewer’s thoughts and opinion. As seen in Fig. 1, Benito Mussolini's portrait of himself on the horse was altered with the removal of his horse handler. Without the handler, Mussolini appears to be tall, big and heroic and draws the viewer's eyes to him. These changes not only alter the picture, but they also alter the viewer’s opinions that ultimately leads to the fabrication of the …show more content…

With this, they are allowed to show what they wish often abusing and directing the audience in the wrong direction by not providing the whole picture of the world around us. In Dave Eggers’, Women Waiting to Take a Photograph, he observes a woman photographer who decides to show the irony of a market named “Go-Getters” that lies in a poor underdeveloped community. Eggers observes and comments, “She has her window closed, but will open it when the right person appears, and then shoot that person under the sign that says Go-Getters.” He also comments, “[She] has a good eye for the inequities and injustices of life, for hypocrisy and the exploitation of the underclass.” This comment adds to the idea that photographers hide the self-evident truths of what they are really capturing. In Barriers to Seeing by Freeman Patterson, he alludes that, “We develop a tunnel vision ,which gives us a clear view of the rut ahead of us, but prevents us from seeing the world around us.” This barrier does prevent not only the photographer but the audience as well not being able to see beyond what is in front of their

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