These two images where originally published by the Associated Press following Hurricane Katrina. These images do a lot of cultural work by showing the difference in how the media portrayed this tragedy. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina many questions about racial issues in the United Sates came into question, many of which were centered on the idea of equal treatment of all people. Although these images do not say the race of the people in them they still evoke ideas associated with the naturalization of whiteness.
Both of these pictures show the same general thing, people fining food in after the hurricane. The captions of these two images are where we see the political agenda. In the second image the two white residents finding food. This suggests that they are simply a product of this tragedy. Also by calling them residents it gives they some social status. In the first image the young man of color is doing the same thing as the white couple however he is a looter. When seen alone, we align this image with all our cultural stereotypes of people of color being criminals; as a result we read this image with less empathy toward this young man. The second image however, is designed to make us feel bad for these white people. By doing this it makes us side with them, thus creating an invisible binary division of white been good. All that said when seeing this two images together it makes us call into question our own personal stereotypes and think about how we may have read these if they where single images.
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