An Old, Old Trick

[poliphilo]

Press photographers are routinely accommodated immediately below the podia from which politicians deliver their speeches- and have no option but to look up- as if in adoration- and produce pictures that make their subjects look dominant and commanding. It's an old, old trick; they- and we- are being manipulated- and it irks me that picture editors persist in going along with it.

There's a typical podium picture in this morning's Guardian- which, if one didn't know better, would lead one to think that the increasingly frail and flummoxed Joe Biden was made of granite.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Funny though isn't it how they also manage to take shots which makes the great and good look proper idiots?

I'm a photographer and I know how these things work! :o)

[poliphilo]

The camera doesn't exactly lie, but it selects and manipulates- which comes to much the same thing.

[conuly]

Isn't this literally called "Hitler cam"?

[poliphilo]

It probably is.

Hitler and his crew knew exactly where to put the cameras.

And yet and yet...

Triumph of the Will is a masterclass in political propaganda but also monumentally boring.

[cmcmck]

Leni Riefenstahl was a photographic genius!

[poliphilo]

I won't quarrel with that.

[shewhomust]

Why, then, does being photographed from this angle simply give me a double chin? (or, if you will, emphasise the dounle chin I actually have)?

[poliphilo]

I guess you have to co-operate with the camera. If you're deeply into a political oration with arm flung wide and a visionary expression on your face people aren't going to notice the double chin.