PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

73the idea that viewers bring their own assumptions and expectations to a reading of aphotograph. This is arguably not different than studying a speech act or pamphletreading. The photograph does its own work as well. Roland Barthes suggests thatphotographs limit, frame, and perspecitivize a moment in time. 134Hariman and Lucaitesdevelop this notion of framing by noting that a photograph is sectioned off by the“rectangular boundaries” and “marks the work as a special section of reality that acquiresgreater intensity than the flow of experience before and after it.” 135Fundamental toanalyzing photographs is the work of the critic to read the text of the photograph andsimultaneously recognize the already framed image being constructed by the camera (andoperator).Visual images are political. Susan Sontag’s work on photography proves helpfulin understanding the underlying power relationship present when a picture is political.She notes, “[t]o photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means puttingoneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge . . . like power.” 136As a tool of power, photographs serve as evidence of claims made; they can be proof to askeptic. Sontag reminds us:In deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another,photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects. Although there isa sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it,photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawingsare. Those occasions when the taking of photographs is relativelyundiscriminating, promiscuous, or self-effacing do not lessen the didacticism of