Picture Perfect: Life in the Age of the Photo Op

by Kiku Adatto
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Published by: Princeton University Press
eBook Publish Date: June 25, 2009
Print ISBN: 069112440X
Filesize: 3.13 MB
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Overview
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Overview

We say the camera doesn't lie, but we also know that pictures distort and deceive. In Picture Perfect, Kiku Adatto brilliantly examines the use and abuse of images today. Ranging from family albums to Facebook, political campaigns to popular movies, photo ops to Photoshop, Adatto reveals how the line between the person and the pose, the real and the fake, news and entertainment is increasingly blurred. New technologies make it easier than ever to capture, manipulate, and spread images. But even in the age of the photo op, we still seek authentic pictures and believe in the camera's promise to document, witness, and interpret our lives.

Editorial Reviews

In this engrossing analysis of modern imagery, Adatto chronicles the rise of America's photo-op culture and the explosion of social networking sites, image-conscious photography and the guerrilla war between gaffe-seeking journalists and self-aware politicians. Average citizens are bombarded with so many sleek and produced images a day, they've lost track of authenticity, according to Adatto. Paying particular attention to the photo op's political influence, she compares coverage of the 1968 campaign between Nixon, Humphrey and Wallace with the showdown between Dukakis and Bush in 1988, demonstrating how, in a mere 20 years, photo-ops and sound bites had transformed news. Adatto doesn't delve as heavily into contemporary elections; however, she scrutinizes some of the most well-known images from the invasion of Iraq (George W. Bush posing under the Mission Accomplished banner; the photos of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib), and her solid grasp and interpretation of pertinent pop culture from Bogart to Warhol to the films Network and The Truman Show amply compensate for the lapse. This book is an admirable analysis of the role of the image in modern culture and an eloquent defense of why words still matter. (June)
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Author Information

Bio of Kiku Adatto

Kiku Adatto is a Scholar in Residence at Harvard University's Humanities Center. Her writings on culture, politics, and the media have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times and the New Republic.