History Of Image- Seminar- Favourite Photograph

Last week in the seminar Chris asked us to bring in a Photoraph that we like as we would be talking about it in the seminar.


Today we all presented our photographs and talked about them, i think that this was useful as with our 2 weekly group tutorials with John it helps us to analyse images and also gives us more confidence when interacting with each other. I enjoyed seeing the photos that other people liked and why, it was interesting to hear a different persepective.


For my photograph i chose Sebastiao Salgado's- Child being weighed as part of a supplementary food relief programme.


I wanted to record this so i have typed up a brief analysis and the photo is also shown below.

Depicting the child of the South American mine workers, it shows poverty and an obvious level of starvation.

The Denotation of the title would suggest the child’s life hanging in the balance, as does the connotation of the composition; by the child being suspended, rendering it helpless and destitute.

The form and composition create balance in one sense but in doing so loses the identity of the child, contrary to this are the earring and the necklace it wears, going against the use of the child as a symbol.

Something that adds to the rhetoric is the Symbolism present in this Photo, there is the dark space outside the doorway and in the space is a baby lamb, perhaps meaning new life and death. The measure on the scales appears to be like a stake through the child’s heart maybe symbolising the health of the child being linked to the scales and the extremely low weight of it. Another thing to mention is that the child’s hands are both in the prayer position and clinging to the material of the scales as though clinging to life, and the fact that it looks up as though looking to god.


All of this apparent symbolism could in fact be coincidence but there seem too many for them all to be created by chance. The fact that they exist only makes the image stronger and adds to its power and impact on people.


It is a shame that images like this are so easily cast aside by the western world in a bid to find a more aesthetically pleasing subject to admire, telling ourselves that it is not important because it isn’t happening to us.