Media:

Invisible

participants?


One group of people that were present on May 8, yet seldom specifically mentioned, was journalists and photographers. Every photograph throughout this site is testament not only to those in front of the camera but to the person snapping the shutter. Each must be understood as the result of numerous decision and negotiations.

Why did the photographer take the picture at that particular moment? Would a picture taken an instant earlier or later reveal a different story about May 8?

How might the cropping of photographs change your interpretation of who participated in the disturbances? Who is included or excluded? Whose actions take up the center stage in a photograph and whose are left to the periphery?


How and why did editor decide to publish the photographs they did? What arguments were they trying to make?

Compare, for example, the image of police officers published by the Pace Press on the left with the one published by the New York Times on the right. If you only read one of these papers, how would your understanding of police passivity differ from someone who had seen both of them?

Media representations of May 8 dramatically affected the ways in which people across the nation and the world understood the events. When you look through the site, compare the stories told in newspapers and magazines to those told by witnesses in letters and telegrams. How do the stories differ? In what ways to they agree?