Visual communication blog entry post 1

My second blog is also about the political career of Margaret Thatcher, when her premiership and the economic changes she sweeped in weren't even a dream or a nightmare to anyone except Margaret Thatcher herself.

This photograph was taken of Margaret Thatcher much earlier in her political career, and judging by the style of the photograph, it was either taken when she was first elected to parliament as an MP for Finchley, North London, when she first entered the Conservative shadow cabinet as shadow Fuel Spokesman, or when she became secretary of state for Education under Edward Heath's Conservative government in June 1970. It is unlikely that it was taken when she became Conservative party leader in 1975 or after that as fashions, her hairstyle and her hair colour had changed dramatically by then. The fact that the image is in black and white and obviously aged, and the fact that Margaret Thatcher looks young in this image suggests roughly how old the picture is.

(Image taken from http://www.morethings.com/images/margaret_thatcher/margaret-thatcher-100.jpg)

The image of a young MP in front of the Houses of Parliament is an effective one - the size difference between the MP in the image and the Big Ben clock tower shows that the MP feels very small and insignificant in such an institution as the House of Commons, especially when they are new, plus the image shows that the MP still has a long way to go to being a prominent member of the cabinet, as the size of Big Ben compared to them represents the size of the task that lays ahead of them before they are to become a household name. Towering persons or objects have represented power and wealth in photograhy many times from MPs standing in front of the Houses of Parliament, to the Daleks on Doctor Who.

Images such as this have even been spoofed by satirical media, such as The New Statesman, ITV's political satire sitcom, which ran from 1987-1992. This is not the finalised DVD cover for the DVD release of the series, however this image was used in the montage image that was the final DVD release cover.

(Image taken from http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/953/thenewstatesmanfrontcov.jpg).

The photo of Mrs thatcher, above, is a great source for framing to represent power.

For a start, the placing of Margaret Thatcher a long way in front of the Houses of Parliament suggests, to me, that she is a bright young person, eager to take on the world of politics, and with a political career ahead of her. The image of Big Ben in the background, however, suggests to me that the inception of parliament is not in the distant past yet, as it will have many more years of use, but Big Ben being in the background is certainly rather old.

Little did anyone know at the time of taking the original photograph what effect Margaret Thatcher would have on the UK and how she would split society between "love her" and "hate her". She has been likened to Marmite because, as one of their advertising slogans went: "you either love it or hate it".