Deshpande Group Claim

The picture my group chose to work with was a picture of pesticide being sprayed into a gutter to kill bug larvae. Only the nozzle of the sprayer is shown and in the background is a small naked child standing a foot or two away with an older woman crouched over holding a bucket and a basket of some kind. The woman is very skinny and she is in an awkward crouching position. The building they are outside of is rusted and has chips in the paint all over. It looks very unsanitary. Although the article is focused on how they spray pesticide in the water because of an outbreak of Malaria the emphasis is put on the small child and woman in the back of the picture. This picture is a prime example of a claim made by Shekhar Deshpande within his article The Confidant Gaze. The claim made was, “In fact, it would not be out of place to suggest that National Geographic has made an aesthetic of its own in photography. It is slick, it is technically flawless or even adventurous, and it attempts to sanitize and universalize the uncomfortable as well as different elements of other cultures” (Deshpande par 7). In an attempt to sanitize this picture National Geographic has the small naked child standing in the middle of the picture so your attention is drawn to this cute little kid instead of the pesticide going in the water a couple feet away from him. Perhaps National Geographic purposefully does this to make you feel alright about looking at the picture. The image without the child would be very ineffective because the viewer doesn’t want to look at a pesticide nozzle spraying pesticide into the water. They want to see the culture and the people its affecting.