EID Reading Synthesis

This reading was actually pretty interesting. The first few pages made me think I was going to be hitting myself in the head due to the general repetitiveness of the reading at that point, but it eventually got better. The first few pages described the fact that most people view photographs as simply a still frame of a moment in time, when in reality, a photograph is an extremely useful and successful tool of rhetoric. While it expressed this basic sentiment over and over for the first 3 pages, it at least brought up a valid point. When people view a photograph, they aren't taking into account that the photographer is using this image in order to make the audience think and feel a certain way about the subject in the picture. They think the photographer may have just thought that particular scene was interesting and decided to capture that moment on film. They don't stop and think that maybe everything was intentional, that it was all done with a purpose. Photographers are sneaky people and can slip things into a photo that go almost undetected but still incite reactions and emotions within the viewers.

They also go on to mention what everyone knows as a "Kodak Moment". Skenazy describes the moment as "the moment our life most conforms, however briefly, to the way we'd like it to be." She describes the fact that people only take photos of their every day lives that make them appear to be the happy, normal, successful family that they want to be. People will take pictures of their child's 5th grade graduation or a mother and son making cookies together, but they'll never take a picture of a messy, toy covered room, a child in timeout or mom and dad fighting and stick that in the family photo album. They won't because it represents parts of their lives that they aren't exactly proud of or want to capture forever. By doing this, they effectively distort or negate the true memory of their lives. This is something that almost every family in America does, but they don't realize it until someone points it out. We try to embed only what we want into our memory of our lives, and try to push out everything that doesn't coincide with the image of ourselves that we want to perpetuate to the people around us.