A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words... But the Words of Whom?

Snap. It's that easy. Grabbing a camera, focusing on a moment in time, and clicking. With three simple steps, you have succeeded in capturing a realistic, true instant in history, right? My answer to this question would be both yes and no. While I have always been one to put my full trust in images - to me pictures didn't lie - after reading the article Images, Power, and Politics, I'm not so quick to rely on the face value of a photo.

When you see an image, what is the first thing that comes to mind? To me, it is typically some emotional response followed by a feeling of concreteness, a sense that I am looking at a moment in time and discovering exactly what happened. I see now that I haven't always been an active viewer when it comes to digesting images. The article tied in many points we have been discussing in class on what gives a photograph meaning. In my eyes, a photo having a meaning and getting the meaning a certain way directly correlate with a photo having truth.

When considering how a photo gets it's truth, there are many answers to research. A few of them are listed below.

1. The photographer gives the image truth.
2. The camera gives the image truth. 
3. The viewer gives the image truth.
4. The situation gives the image truth. 
5. The objectivity accompanied with photography gives the image truth.

From studying the items listed above, it is easy to see that so much of an image's meaning and truth come from different perspectives. Is the photographer showing us all of the situation or only a small piece? Is the camera purely objective based on its nature of being a machine? Is the viewer culturally primed to decode the image in one way or another? Could the situation be taken in many different directions? 

Take for instance this image of a soldier in the Iraq War. When trying to decode the meaning behind this simple image of a soldier in a different pose than the rest of the men in the photo, many different interpretations can be formed. If you are a deeply spiritual person, you may immediately think this man is praying. If you are a soldier yourself, you may conclude that he is simply taking a moment of calm in the chaos that accompanies this role. If you are a protester of the war, you may be filled with anger that this man is in such a vulnerable state. Likewise, if you are a supporter of the war, you may be filled with great pride for you country and great respect for his man. 

With such opposing opinions that can be drawn from an image that is supposed to have such objectivity and truth, I can't help but question the amount of trust I should be putting in images. This point strengthens my thoughts that photos and writing should be paired together for the most effective source of truth. 

What was your first reaction when you saw the image of the soldier? Do you feel a solid truth can be found by viewing the image without a background story? What cultural, social, racial, or political factors do you think helped shape your interpretation of the image?