Worldmaking frame by frame

This chapter addresses the relationship between imagemaking and worldmaking, or how assumed conflict shapes the production and circulation of news images which then in turn contribute to what political possibilities seem plausible. Specifically the chapter looks at worldmaking at two sites: the newsroom of a major US news publication and a World Press Photo seminar intended to develop democracy by way of photojournalism. At both sites presumed binaries shape processes of worldmaking frame by frame. Balancing such aesthetic conflict comes to stand in for journalistic objectivity. The professional brokering of news images involves simultaneous processes of producing representations and reproducing worldviews. Understanding these processes is key to understanding global infrastructures of worldmaking with its production of certain categories of people and possibilities for certain kinds of visibility and not others. In the end, better scholarship on how images both represent and produce political conflict may require that we look beyond images of conflict itself.