Photojournalist Investigation
Analysing The Images – Photograph One
This photo is one of the photos from the series of Disney photographs ‘A Year of a Million Dreams’. It interprets a scene from the Disney story, Cinderella. Like most of Leibovitz's work, this photo links the character from the story tale to the public persona of the celebrity. Annie Leibovitz aimed to capture Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella because her public persona is similar to that of Cinderella in the story. The photo's purpose was to re-interpret the Cinderella story through a still image, whilst being able to recognise the scene and how it relates to the story. This image also supports and challenges dominant stereotypes of women and representations of that gender.
SWAT Codes
• Symbolic – The clothes which the subject is wearing make her look elegant and beautiful, as if she is an angel. These clothes symbolise wealth, royalty and innocence. The glass slipper, which is on the staircase symbolises that she is leaving something behind, which brings forward many ideas that relate to the story, for example she is leaving her royal, hidden life behind and returning to her dark, unfortunate life as the scene gradually dims down darker the further away from the castle she gets.
• Technical – A long shot is used to capture not only the full body of the character but the environment and setting as well. This image was taken using a long shot so that it shows the background setting and shows audiences how the character and image relates to the story of Cinderella. It shows the castle as a bright happy place and then in the foreground, the setting is dark and mysterious as it goes further down the staircase.
Design Composition
• Rule of thirds – The castle fills up the top third of the image while the rest of the image is all spaced out to fill out the rest of the thirds, not real big image fills up the complete space of the thirds or fall on any third lines. This is done so that the central focus is more so Cinderella but the audience is still able to recognise the story behind the image and the symbolic and technical codes.
• Pattern and repetition - Organic and geometric textures and shapes (trees,castle, plants etc.) fill most of the image, contrasting with the figure of Cinderella, making her the focus of the image.
• Camera angles -A long shot is used to capture not only the action of the photo but the environment. Cinderella running down the stairs (the action) creates meaning when the environment (the