Blurred Lines/Head Lines
by Alana Cohen
When dragging the photograph of Beyonce into google the first headlines to show up are:
“Beyonce Admits To Demon Possession While Flaunting…”
“Beyonce As Gateway To Satan? The Long, Strange History…”
“Beyonce Sold Soul To Satan For $115 Million Dollars”
“Beyonce Jealous Of Kim Kardashians Pregnancy”
The photograph is simply a picture of Beyonce holding up her hand, yet the headlines are outrageous. This holds true for other images dragged into Google from the class pool. For this project I portray the first 5 Headlines that come up when dragging each photograph into google. The image is then revealed on the following page of the book. The purpose of this is to draw attention to how media constructs false meaning from photographs and how an image can be interpreted by viewers however they please. To make my book ever more of a surprise reveal for the viewer, I blur out the subject of each image in the Headlines. By reading the headlines on the page before seeing the image, viewers are forced to imagine the visual solely from the text. This leads to a surprising reveal when the page is turned and the real image is revealed devoid of meaning.
