No Image Is a Window
The temptation with images is to treat them as transparent, as though a painting shows you a room. Every image is made, by someone, for someone, with choices at every step.
The frame is the first argument. What is outside it was decided by someone, and you cannot see the decision. Framing is the most effective form of distortion because it leaves no trace inside the image.
Photographs lie without faking anything. Early photography required long exposures, so documentary images of war were staged, like Roger Fenton's arranged Crimean cannonballs.
Treat a photograph as testimony from a witness with a position, not as a fact. Ask who held the camera, why they were there, and what is just outside the frame.
Maps Are Arguments
A projection flattens a sphere. Every projection distorts; there is no neutral map.
| Projection | Preserves | Distorts | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercator | Angles | Area | Greenland equals Africa |
| Peters | Area | Shape | Political corrective |
The rest of the cartographic arguments include what is at the centre, whose language names the places, and what is left blank. Blank spaces on colonial maps claimed nothing was there worth recording.
The rule: An image's unwitting testimony is its best. A propaganda poster is authoritative about anxieties, showing what the regime feared. Background details in paintings are least distorted.