Race and Images

Some say a picture is worth a thousand words, but without context, how can we know that those words are correct or accurate of the situation portrayed? If someone were to glance at this image, they would see dark men in head wraps holding weapons. They might come to the conclusion that these men were gearing up for combat or listening to their leader's speech. We don't see what the they are looking at, this made me think 'Was this done on purpose to hide the context of the picture?'. It made me wonder what was holding their attention and why they were holding weapons and what the purpose of their gathering means.

The object that drew my attention first is the light machine gun held by the person in the foreground. We don't see his face, but we see the faces of the men by him, the faces that many Americans consider synonymous with Terrorism in the MiddleEast. It isn't hard to read from what region of the world this was taken in. Even without knowledge of the location, one could think 'Where do you see men with dark skin, turbans, guns, and beards?'.

The angle of the shot make the men and their weapons seem larger, more threatening. You don't need to look closely to notice that the gun held in the foreground has an empty belt of ammunition hanging from it and more bullets still loaded, implying that it has seen combat and the viewer might think 'Where did those bullets go?'. The gun also show signs of age and abuse, it is an old weapon that has not been properly maintained. These readings imply to me that the owner only knows how to use the gun as a mechanism of combat rather then as a finely tuned instrument that requires constant upkeep. I saw this as the owner having a lack of true military training, likely that the owner had been given the gun and told where to shoot.

Then I noticed how none of them are holding the guns at the ready, they hold them in relaxed positions. The first time I saw this picture was in a post by the Boston Globe, the image is of former Taliban soldiers handing over their weapons to the Afghan government as part of a peace-reconciliation program. Why did the photographer take the picture the way he/she did? Why focus on the guns being held rather then when the guns is handed over? Someone who glances at this sees zealots, men with big guns and turbans. They don't know the true context, and without the context, what is read can be far different from the reality.