Communication eassy 6 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Communication eassy 6 - Essay Example Capitalistic marketing was quick to pick up on the influence that images could have to connect people to their products and reach the emerging mass market. Napoleon is credited with saying that, "A good sketch is better than a long speech" (Bonaparte). If this has been translated to mean that a picture is worth a thousand words, then a photograph is worth a million. A photograph accurately portrays an entire scene and gives the viewer the background, the context, and the emotion of the subject. Pictures can explain a scene or a situation in a way that defies description. The citizenry could not have understood the magnitude of the Civil War without the photography of Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner. Their photos brought the war to the mind of the people and connected them to the event in a way that words could not describe. When Brady displayed his photographs of the dead at Antietam the New York Times noted that mere words were like a funeral next door. However, they solemnly noted that, "Mr. Brady has dome something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it" (Bradys Photographs 5). Photographs brought the war home and into the consciousness of the American psyche. In addition to being able to bring reality to a story or an event, photography has the ability to do it instantly. It also requires very little effort on the part of the audience. It takes patience, time, and concentration to adequately digest a thousand words, but one photograph of a Great Depression era soup line tells volumes about the desperation that pervaded the cities. We could understand the suffering of the poverty and feel the hunger of Appalachia. The Dust Bowl was made more real and palatable. We could experience all