Harvest of Death

I was reading through Media Studies : an Introduction by Robert Kolker this weekend, studying for a test I have next week, when I saw this photo.  The book talks about the reality effect – if it’s a picture, it must have been true.  What’s in the picture must have been what was really happening.

This picture, “Harvest of Death,” was taken during American Civil War in 1863 and was published in a book titled, Photographic Sketch Book of War. 

Upon an initial reading of this image you see many bodies, lying dead on a field full of what looks like dead grass.  They lay haphazardly on the ground, but only closest to the camera.  As you look closer, you notice that in the background, there are significantly fewer bodies; in fact, I count six, five of which are right in front of the camera.

This image was shown to American citizens all around the country, and families of soldiers.  Based on this picture, I would imagine that the war was creating immense numbers of casualties.

As a country, very few of us have experienced war directly.  We rely on journalism and the news to give us an accurate representation of events and stories we are not there to witness ourselves.

This image is a perfect representation of the politics of news – we are shown this image to be persuaded that this is what war looks like.  People are lying dead everywhere, in a vast, open field.  However, this image is faked to the degree that bodies were moved, or posed, for the greatest emotional effect.

By relying on the news/media for trustworthy stories, images and ideas, we are giving them a certain degree of power.  The politics of news and the politics of representation are vividly obvious here.  By representing war this way, all Americans who saw this image created an inaccurate representation of war, and the photojournalist was undeniably lying to his audience.

This war time representation is doing ‘cultural work’ by convincing the public this photo is an accurate representation of the civil war – which based on the facts, it is very posed and not real at all.  This can create/add to Cultivation Theory or “Mean World Syndrome,” the public saw this picture and all of a sudden had a terrible view of the war their friends and family were in.