"A three-quarter face photograph… suggests the tyranny of an ideal: the gaze is lost nobly in the future, it does not confront, it soars, and fertilizes some other domain, which is chastely left undefined. Almost all three-quarter face photos are ascensional, the face is lifted towars a supernatural light which draws it up and elevates it to the realm of a higher humanity; the candidate reaches the Olympus of elevated feelings, where all political contraditions are solved: peace and war in Algeria, social progress and employers' profits, so-called 'free' religious schools and subsidies from the sugar-beet lobby, the Right and the Left (an opposition always 'superseded'!): all these coexist peacefully in this thoughtful gaze, nobly fixed on the hidden interests of Order."
Roland Barthes, "Photography and Electoral Appeal" from Mythologies, 1957.
[img]http://obeygiant.com/images/2008/10/obama.jpg[/img]
the tyranny of an ideal (1957/2009)
-
Type: discussion
