The Confident Gaze

The article "The Confident Gaze" by Shekhar Deshpande is about the well known magazine National Geographic. Deshpande explains how National Geographic is a magazine that people of the Western world often go to to find information about the other worlds around us. The magazine gives many pictures and information about other countries and their problems. Deshpande often talks about the covers of this magazine and what the goals and intentions are of the photographers that take them. Throughout the article not only does Deshpande talk about the effect this magazine has on people but why this magazine has such a great effect on the Western world. Deshpande claims that "[w]hile we admire the accomplishments of its photographers to bring us the rest of the world, we forget that the photographs and the context in which they are placed represent a very conscious effort by the editors to make the world a happy place and a happy especially for the Western eye" (par 9). In other words, the National Geographic photographers take their pictures in a certain way. When looking at the cover of one of these magazines the pictures almost seem posed; posed in that posision to make the magazine cover more apealing to the reader. When Deshpande refers to the "Western eye" he means us, the culture that is more technilogicaly advanced than the other cultures that witch National Geographic talks about. Since we, people of the Western world, are exposed to the media National Geographic and its photographers need to take pictures that we will respond to us and that will capture our interest. This is hard because we have pictures, the news, and all of these sources and information all around us; its hard to stop and look at just one thing. It needs to grab out attention.

Deshpande also states that "[h]uman suffering becomes worth a good image. The hunger with which the photographers eye looks at the word consumes those images that are transferable into nascent and yet technically perfect photographs" (par 10). Even if the photo is of starving children or homeless obviously hungry people, the photos capture the reader with its color and emotions. We feel bad for these people we see but the photo graph makes it looks better than it really is. Its not the true meaning, its a half meaning of what is really going on. If its not happening to us, if we aren't the ones living like those in these pictures then we are happy.