CNN asked both candidates’ staffs to submit photos from “inside” their campaign over the past week. The images that both candidates’ staffs sent in are featured today on the CNN homepage.
I’ve been trying recently to find a “column” of visual text to show my beginning journ class (as opposed to “news” photos), and this may have provided an interesting exercise.
Here’s the setup:
“Several weeks ago, CNN invited each campaign team to submit images from the last week of the race, from Friday, Oct. 26 through Saturday, Nov. 3.
Little did anyone know that the last week would be dominated not by last-minute stops in swing states or wall-to-wall speeches to rally the party faithful, but rather one story: Superstorm Sandy.”
It’s a fascinating look at each party’s selection process and editing of visual texts. It’s also an engaging challenge: given total freedom, how would ‘you’ (if you were the candidate’s people) assemble a “portfolio” of images to present to the American public in the final days before an election?
There was NOT a “party neutral” link to get to the “overall” story — so here’s one of the candidates, and you can switch over to the other candidate quite easily.
I plan to ask my sophomores if they can feel any “message subtext” from both sets of these visual texts, being targeted at them.
I think my students are much less adroit at (and therefore much more susceptible to) seeing how images can be carefully crafted to an audience to convey themes and ideas.