Analysis Of A Too-Perfect Picture By Teju Cole

People often toss around the notion that “art is subjective.” We have heard the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” one too many times growing up. We all understand that everyone holds different perspectives, but maybe we have become numb to the actual meanings behind these words. We are the ones who succumb to the aesthetics of art without truly understanding the contexts in which it arises from. We seem to think we know all about a culture once we possess or even create a certain “stereotypical” work of art. We get so caught up in the beauty of it all, but we need to question what exactly aesthetic values do in creating a false sense of reality. Writers like Teju Cole understand this urge and give us a wake-up call that we are living
A reality that exceeds beyond the image itself, from the contexts in which a certain photo came to be. He critiques those whose photographs serve merely as instant eye candy to further strengthen his argument that genuine pictures display the uniqueness of everyday life. Cole leads with the build-up of Steve McCurry’s work, stating its vivid imagery and grandiose appearance. The haunting photo of that girl in a red headscarf with big green eyes? That was by McCurry. It would be fair to assume that he is a visual genius with an eye for artistic imagery, but Cole only rejected his photographs completely thereafter. He claims that McCurry’s particular selection of viewpoints “is not simply to present an alternative truth: It is to indulge in fantasy” (Cole 972). A fantasy, in fact, deep-rooted in colonization and imperialism, historical truths that should not be ignored in representations of a culture. Cole insists that framing photos to alter the way we interpret their origins is a false representation of
He wants people to appreciate the diversity in culture of each African country, but “your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular” (Wainaina 543). Wainaina wants people to reject not only generalizations about Africa, but the inevitable appropriation and fetishization of the cultures that follow. In a sense, the satirical angle of the text makes us feel uncomfortable because it points out what we as a western society have done wrong to represent a large population. Wainaina wants us to understand that the lives of those in Africa are not to become our sob stories or our life stories, that we should not be the saviors or the revealers of a