Session 2 – Unstable Objects: Photography, Social Change, and Dissent
Choose a historical photograph. Find three versions of this photograph online.
Note any differences you see between these versions.
How has cropping impacted each version of the image?
How has cropping affected or changed the politics of this image?
I’ve selected the photograph titled “Into the Jaws of Death” by Robert F. Sargent, taken June 6, 1944. The image depicts American soldiers disembarking their landing craft, wading through the water to storm Omaha Beach during the Normandy landings of World War II. The first image is the original, the second is cropped to focus primarily on the soldiers toward the center of the frame, and the third (printed as a comforter?…) is cropped to make the image vertical and highlight only the scene framed by either side of the military landing craft.
Compared to the original, the second image is zoomed-in and appears to draw attention to the only soldier whose face we can see, as he’s turned almost 90 degrees, showing his left profile. Here, we can only see a small portion of the beach and none of the background beyond it, nor can we see the sky, which adds an ominous element to an already dire scene.
The third image not only seems to lessen the seriousness of the events taking place, considering it’s been made into a comforter for a bed, but—along with the second image—does not depict the scale of the scene that’s unfolding. These two images could be showing just one boat worth of soldiers, rather than what’s shown in the original, where we get the sense that there are numerous landing crafts in play, with—what is likely—many more soldiers.
By cropping the original, the second and third images seem to lose some of the intensity. Granted, it’s still a war scene, but with the second image, for example, we cannot see the background and sky, which happen to add—not only to the composition—but the overall mood of the image. As mentioned, the dark sky is rather ominous, and the sunlight that does break through the clouds and onto the beach, makes the photo appear particularly well-timed. And with the third image, by framing the scene between the sides of the landing craft, the image seems much more planned, as opposed to the imperfections of the original, which makes it feel much more candid, taken amidst the chaos of a literal war scene.
source 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Jaws_of_Death
source 2: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Into_the_Jaws_of_Death_23-0455M_edit_(cropped).jpg
