Response to The Picture Problem

               Before reading this article, The Picture Problem, I had no idea that the intentions and usages of images could be so dynamic and powerful. Hearing that armed forces based some of their very important and powerful strikes strictly on small screens only a few square inches in size made me rethink how I look at photographs. Based on this article, the way that images are interpreted is very much personally based. Someone’s past experiences and influences can change the entire picture of what the results of a mammogram or air strike can be. Even when millions of dollars are spent on technology, it never means that that device that was made to create perfect results. Even if the equipment works properly, it doesn’t mean that the person in use of the device will interpret the information correctly. And what was really surprising were the varying and different conclusions that the lot of experienced doctors had on the same mammogram. Even when presented with the same information and same image, many different conclusions were determined. And the decision based on one doctor’s results could change the attitude that one person has towards their life. If one doctor told you that you were more likely to have cancer, based on your mammogram results, you would most likely believe them. But because of the variance in interpretations, even if the results were or weren’t correct, that doctor may be misleading the patient. While it is always advised upon to get a second opinion, I’m sure not everybody does. This could mean large impacts on one person’s life. And in the other large topic discussed in this article: war, this could mean a large impact on many people’s lives. If the interpretations of one pilot are wrong, that could mean bombing innocent people and hurting bi-standards.

               It was stated that at the beginning of the first Gulf War, pilots set out to destroy SCUD missiles which were a large danger to Americans. This meant one thing, send planes out to try and destroy them. But there was one problem with this situation: what if the images being seen from thousands of feet up weren’t as accurate as they had hoped to be? Soon after the jets flew out and began targeting these SCUD missiles, pilots would come back to base and report the number of targets that they had destroyed that flight. Many of them said that they had in fact blown up some of these dangerous objects, but when in fact, they actually hadn’t. The misinterpretation of these images that the pilots were seeing could have meant shooting a missile accidentally at an oil tanker, which when looked at from high above, kind of looked like the target that they had had in mind. Now that doesn’t mean only blowing up a possibly non-threatening tanker, but it could have also meant hurting a random individual that was driving the vehicle or was near that vehicle at the time.  Imagery and the sense of sight have become so over powering in our day and age that we can make ourselves believe whatever we want to see. And for those pilots, they wanted to see those SCUD missiles. This article really makes the readers visible of the mistakes that can be made because we are so trusting of one sense. Has photography and imagery become more of a weapon rather than a useful tool and art form to us as humans? I think that people need to take a step backwards when looking at certain images and analyze them closer. There could be more truth to them than we think, but there could also be less information in them than we think we see. It can almost be thought of as an optical illusion, making people’s vision become distorted and bending the truth.