However, in reality, real and stage pictures of this group often times portray relaxation. She talks about how these photographs downplay the labor of war because it presents the times in which people were relaxing and not the busy stressful side of things.
Houston says that “By focusing on the officers and portraying them in this stylized manner, the real hardships faced by the troops are minimized”. This is true because instead of showing the action of what’s truly going on the viewer is painted a different picture. The picture that is painted here is one that’s saying everything is effortless and undemanding.
In this photograph that I found we are shown these things. There is a man hanging out on the back of a wagon. Nothing is really happening in the photograph besides this. We don’t get a war scene in the background or any other action, making it seem like nothing important is going on. Of course, war is more than nothing important, but these pictures don’t show this.
I wrote on this too; I think the types of photos were more driven by the government's money and the strings with it plus the fact it just took longer to make a picture, than the spin of people want to see things other than war...interesting all this!
ReplyDeleteNice post Amy! I can only imagine what the English were saying back home about the war. From these pictures, it does look like they've got it pretty easy huh? Just hanging out, drinking tea, getting their pictures taken. :) If only they could have seen action pictures of actual fighting!
ReplyDeleteD?on't you think the oddest part of this is that there isn't a horse pulling the wagon? That just emphasizes the point that these photos were definitely stylized. They were taken for the sake of art for the people (or in this case, government?) who were sponsoring them. They claim to be recording history as well, and while this is true, this side of "war history" doesn't look like war. Anyone pulling this picture randomly off of the net would assume it's just an old photo- only after seeing what collection it's from would they be able to realize that it was taken duringa time of turmoil.
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