On **** Media Response

            In his essay “On **** Media,” G.H. Hovagimyan discusses how photography dealt a blow to the heroic façade of war.  “The devil is in the details,” he says, “One could no longer stand in front of a heroic painting of soldiers and generals and fanaticize about the glory of battle.”  But does a photograph really restrict the artist from manipulating the truth any less than a painting?  The article made me think of one of the most famous photographs from WW2; the soldiers erecting the American flag after the battle of Iwo Jima.  This photograph served to be one of the most effective pieces of pro-war propaganda, and few could deny that the inherent heroism contained within this photo.  This photo, however, was subject to a great deal of controversy years later because one of the men in the photo was purposefully misidentified because the original “sixth man” had perished at the battle of Iwo Jima shortly after the picture was taken.  This photograph was based upon a lie just as much as the paintings predating photography, and for many “the symbolic language” of this photograph is just as powerful as Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s painting of Washington crossing the Delaware.  So even without lights and filters, photography is able to create a distortion of the truth just as easily as painting or other forms of traditional art.