Food Around the World
After viewing Peter Menzel's "Food" gallery on his website, my knowledge of food worldwide has been expanded. Beforehand, I knew, as well as everyone else, that Americans eat much more and much worse than other people of the world. Now, I am able to visualize it. I kept clicking back and forth between the picture of the North Carolina family and the family in Darfur. Although the Darfur family has two additional members, their weekly food supply is minuscule compared to the Americans. Three simple bags of simple grains and meager fruit and vegetables are placed in front of their skinny bodies. The Americans are much larger, and happier looking, as they are surrounded by a sea of packaged, processed food. The photographer puts our huge, unrealistic separation from the rest of the world on a visual level for his audience. The rest of the world eats on a much smaller and more realistic level, real fish, real grains, even real bugs. Additionally, the photographer portrays this lifestyle in a beautiful way, glorifying the simpler and more natural foods. Therefore, Menzel is making his own persuasive argument through a visual aspect, appealing to the pathos or emotional side of his photography's audience.
I do agree with you on the fact that even though the photographer is taking pictures of families who are close to starving, the pictures are depicted in a beautiful manner. It is shocking, though, to actually see how horribly Americans eat compared to those in other countries. It's not hard to see, now, why our obesity rate is so high.
ReplyDeleteI like what you said something about the pictures having a bit of a pathos appeal because I think that's exactly what Menzel is trying to do here- using this to make the most likely viewers (people in the US) feel compassion for these potentially starving people in underdeveloped countries and such. I think he does a really good job of subtly establishing this.
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