Manipulation of Photos

I chose the image of the British soldier gesturing Iraq citizens in 2003 during the war to take cover. I chose this as this war has impacted our lives in the US for many years and I always looked at pictures and was curious the interaction between the soldiers and civilians. This picture originated in April of 2003 on the cover of the LA Times shortly after the US led an invasion of Iraq. The picture was manipulated by the author combining two different photos from the war to make it look as if the soldier was being compassionate and extremely helpful and caring towards the civilians of Iraq. The photo was manipulated to "improve" the composition of the picture and to portray a different image than actually happened. This image was made this way to show that we were helping the poor people that weren't fighting us and were just caught up in the war, except this image was false. The manipulation was harmful on many levels as the author was fired after 30 years in the business and it portrayed a false image of helpfulness that wasn't actually happening. Thus leading US and allied citizens into believing we were giving hope and help to those caught in the actions while the photo wasn't true and was harmful to our thoughts and notions on what actually was happening.