Analysing Media Texts

Overall Analysis of Images



Shanghai Bombed ‘1937’ by H.S.Wong

This image is one of a baby sat crying by train tracks with rubble surrounding and what appears to be buildings still standing in the distance. This suggests that the area the photographer captured was target by a planted bomb or was in the line of fire of an airstrike. The fact that the photographer used a child instead of a grown man shows people (or the bombers even) that people of all innocence and ages are being hurt and killed.
 

The image was taken at close range with a fixed lens on his Leica camera (as I believe cameras back then did not have zoom) using the diagonals of the train tracks & pavement and presence of the dust, rubble, baby and post to show depth. I’m not sure if the photographer had taken this photographer to give this desired effect but it helps emphasize the devastation showing that the area hit was not small.

The contrast in the image is fairly high which shows that the aperture used was quite wide.
 

This image may mean nothing to children and very little to teenagers with no care to what’s going on in the world around them. The image is more or less targeted to older people as you haven’t really ‘lived life’ at the age of 16 and still in education and because they’ll pay much more attention and will show a lot more sympathy and interest towards it.

This photograph was taken by H.S.Wong who was most noticeable for it. It was taken during the Battle of Shanghai in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The image was captured a few minutes after a Japanese air attack on civilians killing and wounding many at Shanghai’s South Station whilst they waited for an overdue train.

Allegations of falsehood were made by Japanese nationalists and the Japanese Government put a bounty of $50,000 on Wong’s head (an amount equivalent to $810,000 in 2012).