"In this age, like all ages, when the problem of the perpetuation of a race or class and the destruction of its enemies, is that all-absorbing motive of civilized society, it seems irrelevant and wasteful still to create works whose only inspirations are individual human emotion and desire".

Man Ray The Age of Light

Lee Miller, a model for Man Ray and a photojournalist for Vogue during WWII, expresses this mantra with her photo taken in Hitler's bathtub.

     Now in the 21st century surrealism takes on a true surrealist quality with the photo project by Trevor Paglen:The Last Pictures" contains 100 images, chosen by him and a group of colleagues, to be etched on a silicon disc and put into geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator, where it will join man-made satellites, both active and derelict, in an essentially friction-free state for, potentially, the next 4 1/2 billion years. The project, commissioned and presented by New York's Creative Time, Paglen writes, "was inspired by the idea that we should take communications satellites seriously as the cultural and material ruins of the late 20th and early twenty-first centuries."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/The-Last-Pictures-by-Trevor-Paglen-4009759.php#ixzz2BpqaUAUV

     Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, in their essay The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic explore the dangers involved at these intersections through the photography of National Geographic.  The gaze most relevant to this discussion is that of the "institutional, magazines gaze (evident in cropping, picture choice, captioning, etc)".  It is at this intersection where the magazine or scientific journal  presents evidence of the other in its portrait photographs that is statistically incorrect according to its own catalog.  Lutz and Collins reviewed 400 plus National Geographic  portrait photos of the" other "for their essay. They found that in 24% of these photos the subject of the gaze is smiling, yet during the course of its 100 year history, portrait cover photos of the" other" have presented the other as smiling in 38% of these photos.  This is an indication of fuzzy math but makes the" other" appealing to the editors gaze.

  The Kayapo of Brazil have taken a different  view of the western gaze and have used it to gain political and economic power within the Brazilan goverment.  Beth Conklin, in her research work: body paint, feather, and vcrs: aesthetics and authenticity in Amazonian activism observed how the Kayapo have utilized the western gaze to their advantage. The Kayapo after numerous encounters with westerns saw the discomforting gaze placed upon them because of their native dress and body paint.  In order to deflect this gaze they adopted western styles of dress for public consumption. When the government engaged in efforts to take native lands, the Kayapo began protesting in their native dress. This became the tool the Kayapo used to gain political and economic power, it also gave them control of the gaze.