The iconic image I chose to manipulate for this project was a photo taken of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Harry, and Meghan Markle. The original photo was taken at Buckingham Palace in London during the Queen’s Young Leaders Awards Ceremony on June 26, 2018. This was one of the first engagements where the newlyweds, at the time, and Queen Elizabeth were photographed during an formal outing together. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II posing for this picture was a signal to the world that Meghan was integrating into the family well and was being accepted by the Queen and the royal family in general.
However recently in January the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced that they would be taking a step back from their royal duties, and spending the majority of their time out of the U.K. Due to media scrutiny Meghan and Harry decided it would be best to step down as senior members of the royal family. Despite this decision being made by the couple, it was framed in the media as Meghan and Harry being kicked out of the royal family by the Queen. This narrative of the couple being exiled was spread throughout the media and soon it became the only narrative.
In order to reflect this narrative in the previously positive image I decided to use two features. I make a reference to the family tree wallpaper in the Harry Potter series, where the Black family burned holes in the faces of family members who have either died or been disowned. Therefore I used the transparency tool to place a faded version of the Black family tree on top of the original image. In order to represent the royal family “disowning” Harry and Meghan, I used the drawing tool and the fill in tool to create two black holes in front of Harry and Meghan’s faces.
Jessica's ASCJ 200 Blog 