DAY 340

SOCIAL & POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Industry

CULTIVATING AN IMAGE

Photographs are a marketing tool used by industry to gain political power and eventually control public opinion. These photographs are used to portray an industry as being worthwhile, offering progress and ease. They also show industry as large, physically daunting, and too complex for the general population to understand much less keep track of. Once an industry employs a huge number of people and embeds its products into everyday life, it has the ability to sway political agendas. The gas, oil, and automobile industries are prime examples.

On the flip side are the startling revelations revealed by photographers documenting the actual practices of an industry, the results of daily routines like dumping chemical waste into rivers, releasing incinerated debris into the air, or the result of the disposal of computer hardware containing harmful metals. Photographers making these photographs are revealing conditions and instilling awareness into the psyche of a society. But is it too late to change the course of opinion? Can political power truly be stamped out and reassigned by these documentary photographs? —MLR