Meditations on Photographs: Joerg Colberg

There are two types of propaganda in photography: In the first, someone uses a photograph to send a message that might or might not be true, to influence our opinion. This case is very well known, even though the term “propaganda” itself tends to be only used when we’re dealing with foreign dictatorships, say, and less so when we’re looking at, for example, photography used to say something about a presidential candidate.

The second type of propaganda works just the same way, but there’s a twist: It is actually directed at ourselves: We use certain photographs not only to project an image of ourselves, but also to show ourselves that we conform to that image. A classic example is family photography. Another example is provided by people’s Facebook photos. Posting photographs taken at a party on Facebook shows everybody - incl., crucially, ourselves - that a good time was being had. It’s a self-inflicted propaganda, a propaganda where we are only too happy to believe in something that in reality might not exist or that has many more facets, some of them unpleasant.

Excerpt from: http://bit.ly/w8OQxA