The photos of Haiti on Boston.com shows a country that is suffering unfathomable tragedy. From an outsider's standpoint we see an already impoverished culture struggling to survive and working tirelessly to locate loved ones and help the injured. The photos provided interpellate viewers to feel compassion and pain for the people of Haiti and intent of the photographer is to provide viewers with real images of the disaster in order to inform the audience.
The encoded message in the photographs is a cry to viewers for help. The lack of medical supplies and sterile triage areas is shocking in the photographs where the injured are sitting in pools of blood that is not their own. Recent news articles have been full of stories about how doctors have had little or no pain medication to administer so they were doing procedures on people without. The photo of the young girl receiving care reminded me of these stories since her eyes seem to be so full of pain. The only way to decode these images is through dominant-hegemonic reading since the suffering and pain is so obvious, no one should be reading these images in a negotiated or oppositional reading.
The photo of the young men praying in Connecticut is symbolic of the world's reaction to this tragedy. The empathy that has been shown to the Haitians has been impressive; however, there is still so much work to be done to assist the survivors in moving forward with their lives.
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