War Photography Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 8000 words

War Photography - Coursework ExampleBut at its most(prenominal) simple, the photograph (whether it be of a flower in bloom or of a man being shot) is seen as veritable(a) because it shows, most of the time at least, what it literally purports to show. Take one of the most famous war photographs ever takenAnother definition is in order here. The dictionary defines propaganda as 1. the systematic propagation of a principle or cause. 2. Material disseminated by the advocates of a doctrine or cause (American, 2003). In general, propaganda has come to criminate some one-sided presentation that, while perhaps reflecting an actual event or facts, in humans is skewing them in one very particular way. Propaganda is now used as a pejorative whereas when the rule book was first used, in the First World War it was merely a descriptor of a definite kind of news technique.This analysis will consider war photography through the discussion of tetrad contrasting wars the Spanish Civil War, t he Vietnam War, the Falklands War and the Gulf War. Each war may be seen as a fulcrum around which many different forces were revolving. Within the context of photography, different technological developments and the ease of photography provided new opportunities for photographers as the century advanced, and new difficulties for those who would seek to control the images produced by those photographers. There is a great difference between the fragile, heavy and difficult-to-use cameras of the Nineteenth Century and the powerful, easily used cameras of this century. The former needed age to produce the photographs that had been taken, and because of the transportation systems of the time, maybe weeks or even months to reach a major media outlet for publication. straight off a digital photograph can be taken and published to the Internet within seconds, consequently giving access to the whole world. This situation provides numerous challenges for mass media outlets and for the go vernment agencies that would seek to control the spreading of information/documentation. The war photograph is a central focus for this control. As a brief stare at Adamss famous photograph of the execution illustrates, even a single photograph can examine a number of perhaps unanswerable questions. If the photograph is seen as propaganda, whose viewpoint would be being assemble forward If a photograph is untouched by manipulative editing, can it be anything other than authentic IThe Beginnings of War Photography The Spanish Civil War and World War IIWars give way been photographed virtually since the beginning of photography. The American Civil War provides thousands of photographs of battlefields in the aftermath of the killing and portraits of soldiers provide a memorable record of the strain that this total war produced. Similarly, the First World War produced many images of that incommensurable carnage but these were mostly taken after the event as the cameras were large, fragile and unwieldy, exposures often took some(prenominal) minutes (in the Nineteenth