When talking about photo bias, we’re usually dealing with breaking news images that are lacking context, misleadingly framed, cynically staged, spuriously cropped, carelessly recycled or dubiously photoshopped. Sometimes, editors make boneheaded decisions on how to illustrate a story.
We’ve also seen muddled photo essays resulting from computer glitches and even did a case study on a series of wire photos of a border clash that raised glaring questions of who the photographers were and how they got shots of the action so close-up and quick.
Which is brings us to Vogue, a monthly magazine best known for glamour shots of beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes in beautiful settings because its star photographers know how to create beautiful images of their subjects. Vogue’s Mideast edition, Vogue Arabia published a letter by Ahed Tamimi, who recently finished a term in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier. In front of cameras. Think about that.
She was trying to provoke a reaction as her mother filmed the incident.
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Vogue Arabia sent one of its photographers to shoot a glamourous photo of the 17-year-old. She looks awfully nice for a girl just out of prison. I’m going to talk about how “the sausage” of the photo was made and then I’ll talk about its effect.
How the photo was made
I don’t know the specifics of Tamimi’s photo shoot with photographer Nina Wessel. I’m not criticizing Wessel for doing her job as a professional photographer. These five points explain what a glamour photographer’s actual job is — to construct a fantasy in photographic form.
1. The photograph is neither casually posed nor spontaneous. For this shot, Wessel would’ve been accompanied by a hair-stylist, a makeup artist, and probably a clothing coordinator too.
2. While Tamimi doesn’t appear to be wearing makeup, she’s actually wearing a type of makeup which improves one’s appearance with the illusion of being completely natural. It’s called nude makeup (the link’s safe to click on) and it would explain Tamimi’s missing freckles.
3. It’s not uncommon for glamour photographers use photoshop to even out the skin tone on a woman’s face and lighten her eyes. All this creates a striking quality that makes the face especially engaging. In a similar way, you may have improved selfies on your own smartphone before sharing them.
4. The beautiful, even lighting outdoors required extra lighting gear — lamps and/or diffusers. Unwanted shadows on Tamimi’s face would be unalluring.
5. The wind blowing Tamimi’s hair slightly over her shoulder may have been a natural breeze. Or a fan.
Photographers literally take hundreds of photos just to get one good shot. When dealing with subjects like Tamimi — who aren’t professional models — photographers have to take even more shots to get the desired effect. We can only imagine how long this photo shoot took and how many photos were discarded until the very best image was selected.
The effect
The end result of this constructed photo shoot is a pleasant, likable teenager who looks stylish yet modest, serious and passionate, slightly older than 17, and has a certain pain in her eyes.
There’s a parallel between what a glamour magazine does openly and what the Tamimi family is doing more insidiously. Both are constructing an unrealistic fantasy. The difference is that magazines like Vogue openly use showmanship because that’s what readers are looking for. But the Tamimi family, in a sense, creates its own fantasy in order to mislead audiences for political advantage.
What you don’t know from that single photo is that Tamimi has called for stabbings and suicide bombings against Israelis, that not all Arabs view her as a Palestinian icon, or that her recent European tour is really blondwashing terror.
It’s irritating enough that Vogue Arabia saw fit to publish Tamimi’s missive. At the end of her 987-word letter, she writes:
People ask me what life was like in prison, but I wish I didn’t have to talk about it. I just want to forget.
No she doesn’t. Prison is Tamimi’s stepping stone to all the trappings that come with being an icon: meeting world leaders, photo-ops with Real Madrid, billboards in London, etc. She has indicated she wants to study law and pursue political activism, so Tamimi’s fame will open doors for her.
Prison is Tamimi’s meal ticket.
But none of Vogue Arabia’s photographers, makeup artists, hair stylists and show-biz production can whitewash who Ahed Tamimi really is — an opportunistic and attention-grabbing young woman who isn’t really interested in peace.
