What is propaganda photography?

Answer 1

Propaganda Photography is done by a government to influence its citizens, or the citizens of a different country.

A very simple example is a photo taken by the Nazi government of Hitler in a church. Hitler probably visited every church in Germany and the Nazis photographed every visit. The message they were sending is, "Hitler is a church-going man, you can trust him." There are similar pictures of Saddam Hussein with groups of children; these said "you can trust Saddam because he loves children."

On the other hand, propaganda can also be used to influence people against things the government doesn't like. The Iraqis might have used a picture of an American eating bacon to show their people Americans are evil because we like to eat the most unclean of all animals, the pig. (We also dropped bombs on Iraq, and the government got a lot of pictures of THAT.) The Nazis liked making pictures of Jews doing terrible things to make the German citizens hate Jewish people.

Now understand, most countries don't call the propaganda operations they do propaganda because the word has negative connotations.