Split Screen: Kamala Harris at the Munich Security Conference, The New Yorker

Seemingly neutral choices add up to a larger narrative about powerful women.

The image seems fine at first glance. Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, captured mid-sentence by Reuters photographer Kai Pfaffenbach. The New Yorker used this photograph to accompany Peter Slevin's Feb. 27, 2024, article, “The Increasing Attacks on Kamala Harris." She looks unsure, not because she was—I was there, the speech was forceful—but because her eyes glance off the page, her mouth is open. Look closer and you’ll see that this seemingly straightforward news photograph reveals layers of visual sexism.

Illustration by Aiden Kroop

Looking Left, Looking Backward

Harris faces left (her right) in the image, her gaze and body positioned toward the left side of the frame. This might seem like an arbitrary compositional decision, but research in visual psychology suggests otherwise. In cultures that read from left to right, like ours, leftward movement is interpreted as regressive rather than progressive. We search for the next word to our right, so we associate the right with the future; conversely, the left is the past.

Anne Marie Barry, in her seminal work "Visual Intelligence," explains that "the direction in which a person faces in an image carries cultural weight related to our reading patterns." We typically parse visual information the same way we read text which means that for English readers, subjects facing left can unconsciously trigger associations with moving backward.

Research by Sylvie Chokron and Maria De Agostini published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that directional bias in visual composition significantly affected viewers' emotional responses and evaluations of images. Subjects consistently rated images with rightward movement as more positive, dynamic, and future-oriented than identical images with leftward movement.

For a politician like Harris, someone whose trailblazing role as Vice President represents progress and breaking barriers, being framed facing left subtly undermined her message of forward momentum.

White Balance Is Never Neutral

The second problem with this image lies in its color grading. Harris's skin appears oversaturated and distinctly yellowish—a common issue when photographers or editors fail to properly expose and then color-correct images of people with non-white skin tones.

This technical oversight becomes a political one for Harris, an Indian and Black woman whose identity has been scrutinized and contested throughout her career. As I've witnessed firsthand through my lens, proper exposure and color correction for Black and brown skin requires intentional care—something photojournalism has historically struggled with. Of course, nailing the right color in a high-stakes situation like the Munich Security Conference is difficult. I was there too, and not all of my images looked perfect. But the photo editor for this story had choices: find another image that more accurately reflected her skin tone or get someone to fix it.

The oversaturated, yellow tones on Harris's skin in this widely circulated image aren't just poor technique; they are also a contemporary manifestation of a long history of visual media failing people of color. It subtly otherizes Harris, making her appear slightly "off" or "unnatural" to viewers who might not consciously identify why the image feels strange.

Red Alert: The Visual Language of Threat

Perhaps the most striking element of the photograph is the large red circular lens flare or projection that dominates the right side of the frame and partially overlays Harris's figure. The effect creates an immediate visual association with danger. It almost looks like a target.

The color red triggers powerful psychological responses. Research in color psychology consistently finds that red primes concepts of danger and threat. A 2011 study by Andrew Elliot and Markus Maier concluded that even brief exposure to red caused participants to perform worse on tests because of its association with danger and failure. For a woman who has faced unprecedented levels of threats—both rhetorical and literal—this visual coding reinforced a narrative of vulnerability rather than strength.

(Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

Putting it all together

These three elements—leftward orientation, poor color correction, and threatening red symbolism—might each seem relatively minor in isolation. A photographer, photo editor, or reader might dismiss these criticisms as reading too much into an image captured in a split second at a busy event. Believe me, I've made thousands of bad, unusable images. I know deeply how difficult this work is.

But because these seemingly neutral choices add up to a larger narrative about powerful women, we cannot accept the status quo of visually sexist images. As Harris, my former boss, faced unprecedented scrutiny in her historic candidacy, these seemingly small visual choices added up to a larger narrative. During my time as her official videographer and director of video in the White House, I saw firsthand how these visual politics played out daily. Each time she was photographed looking left (backward), with her skin tone altered (othered), beneath threatening visual elements (targeted), viewers absorbed these subtle cues. The New Yorker’s editors could have chosen an image of her looking strong and defiant against the attacks detailed in the piece; instead, they chose to show her looking unsure and vulnerable.

As consumers of media, we can demand better. Notice the patterns. Question why a particular image was selected from dozens of options. The way we frame powerful women visually reflects and reinforces how we see them in the real world, outside the camera’s frame.

Until next time, keep your eyes sharp and your lenses sharper.

Send examples of visual sexism you've noticed to submit@contrariannews.org with the subject line SPLIT SCREEN.

Azza Cohen (she/her) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who served as Vice President Kamala Harris's official videographer in the White House. She recently founded a production company with her wife, Kathleen, and is writing a book about visual sexism from a cinematographer's perspective. Uncover and address visual sexism alongside Azza every other week here on The Contrarian and on Instagram and Bluesky. Azza is, in fact, a big fan of The New Yorker, which bought and distributed her film “FLOAT!” in 2023.

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