BagNews Archives About Staff BagNews is a progressive site dedicated to visual politics and the analysis of news images.
Monday, May 20, 2013

Twitter

@bagnewsnotes »
Advertisement

December 30, 2007

Shading Obama

By Michael Shaw

Time-Ba

The image above — taken while Obama was waiting to be introduced at a campaign event in South Carolina — was the "Barack entry" in TIME's just released Images of the Year.  Employing the shadow, the implication is that this meditative Obama is personally split between dark and light.

Yesterday's NYT front page feature exhibited a similar split, chiding Obama throughout for not being more responsive or accountable to traditional African-American issues and power brokers.

Jj-Ba

The image leading that article conjures its own suggestion of conflict.  By exploiting the reflection in a car window, what is actually a friendly, face-to-face moment between Obama and Jesse Jackson is refashioned to seem like Obama has turned his back on Jackson, leaving the civil rights icon behind while Jackson attempts to hold on to him.

Is it so threatening to corporate media that Obama identifies himself, not as a black politician, but as a politician who happens to be black?  And why the need to cast him as either one or the other, or as someone particularly torn between the two?

A Biracial Candidate Walks His Own Fine Line (NYT)

The Year In Images (TIME)



(h/t: Chris & Jacob.  image 1: Callie Shell / Aurora for TIME.  time.com.  image 2: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press. June, 2007.  nytimes.com)

« Prev

Next »

  • http://www.sabinabecker.com Bina

    Funny…in that first shot, there’s a shadow down his face but none on his shirt. Can you say PHOTOSHOP, kiddies?
    And funny how the media keeps making his race (or alleged lack of it) out to be an issue. You know civil rights have really not advanced far enough when a prospective presidential candidate gets the “he’s black BUT…” treatment. Would his ethnicity be an issue if he weren’t a 50-50 biracial split–say, if he had a white plantation master granddaddy in the woodpile four or five generations back, but looked all-black? Or would he simply be out of the running before it even began (as I suspect would be the case)?

  • http://pdnonline.com Daryl Lang

    Bina, nothing about that first Obama photo looks Photoshopped to me.

  • Smokey

    I dunno…it kind of looks to me like a bit of light-colored polygon is laying over the plaque on the wall as well (and the white paint between the plaque and his head), like it’s even a bit of a *sloppy* photoshopping. The photo was shot with a somewhat large aperture, as the background is blurred a little, and strangely, the lines of the light polygon don’t seem *as* blurred. I had initially thought it was light in the shape of a window, but if that were the case, it would certainly blend considerably better with the objects it’s falling on, and their degree of focus. I wish the image were a little higher resolution, because I think it would become even more obvious.

  • chris in sacto

    TIME was roundly criticized for making O.J. look blacker during his trial for the murder of his estranged wife, Nicole and Ron Goldman. (thanks RitaAnn) What does TIME have against black people?

  • http://profile.typekey.com/sravana/ sravana

    That first pic is without a doubt photoshopped. Badly photoshopped.
    As far as the second, it certainly does make it look like Obama has turned his back on Jackson.
    bad BAD media!

  • Cactus

    The second image is not a good photo, as such. Therefore, it is diabolically cynical, as usual, on Time’s part. Of course, to their credit, they have two black men in the same photo.
    The first one is an interesting and thoughtful Obama, therefore the MSM (NYT) must undermine it in some way. This is just too clever by half (no pun…). Me thinks the ‘gray lady’ is really a small white man who just cannot fathom Obama’s appeal to the great unwashed masses. But that’s probably because none of the NYT types ever, ever, get out of NYC.
    Bina: Obama apparently has a g-g-grandaddy who was a white plantation owner because he is related to the Darth! Which I’m sure embarrasses Obama more than it does Darth.
    as to the technicals of the top photo, I don’t photoshop, but it is interesting that the photo is cropped (actually or mechanically) so that you cannot see if Obama has a shadow. Also, it seems the brightest light is coming from behind him, so why the shadow on his face?

  • http://www.landsedgephoto.com Emily L. Ferguson

    Callie took the first photo. I’d be enormously surprised if it had any processing at all.
    His shirt absorbed the light so, of course, you’re not going to see it.
    You guys need to be photographers!

Recent Comments

Popular Topics

More topics »

Popular Entries


Archives

Recent Entries