The topic of this
paper focuses on the photography of the 2012 presidential campaign
between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, and how visual elements affect
the connection to voters, and subsequently, their opinion on the
candidate's future potential for office. Using photos from both
candidates' official websites I will look at how rhetoric functions
in the techniques of electoral photography; by analyzing how
candidates visually create positive pathos and establish an ethos of
trust and confidence toward voters, I will discuss the strategies
that politicians use to shed themselves in a light of charismatic
normalcy and social decorum, according to the mass population's
definition of what “the everyman” looks like. The particular
media used for this argument will come from official campaign
photography, Aristotle's text On Rhetoric,
and Roland Barthes' essay “Photography and Electoral Appeal” from
his book Mythologies.
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