Week 6 A Sea of Images
This week’s presentations have focused on National Geographic, which I have found quite interesting and relevant to the construction of my practice. National Geographic’s Society Policy Statement (1915) says that images are to conform to ‘absolute accuracy’, ‘beautiful, informative and artistic illustrations. (Lutz & Collins,1993, p26)
This has been discussed in this week’s presentations and it seems National Geographic are more focused on representing the world through a more aesthetic/pictorial way rather than depicting with the ‘real’. The way the publication presents is still with the ideology that it is “reporting the world and all that is in it” (National Geographic front cover, Sept 1998) but through many examples of their front covers, you can see that it focuses more on reflecting our western industrialised selves rather than the world and it’s wider audience.Through my practice I too look at the importance of exploring landscapes with an objective, true perspective for the recording of these military sites.
These past weeks I have had to decide on a balance between aesthetics and truthful record. When Grunberg talks about the balance between pictorial and evidence within National Geographical he says “The tendency to subjugate the mission of gathering evidence to the demands of pictorial appeal becomes especially obvious in the pictures taken by the magazine staff & freelance photographers within the last several years” (Grundberg, 1998). I wonder if I was presented with the opportunity of selling masses of copies of my photo project would I be tempted in the future in producing more representational pictorial images to reach a wider richer audience or would my integrity hold to focus on evidence gathering.
Critical Research Journal 