Review: Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction: Ch 5: Photography and Commodity Culture , 4th ed, 2009

Chapter author Anandi Ramamurthy is a lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, Central Lancashire University.

Starts with a great quote from Debord (1967):

In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles.  Everything that directly lived has receded into a representation. 

Media messages present a glamorous world of sensual experience crafted to minimize conflict.  The camera and photography support the global economic order in two ways:  through creation of presentation of spectacle, and as a tool for surveillance.  Images prod
uce a ruling ideology.  The freedom to consume these images is imagined as freedom itself.   (Sontag 1979: 178-79)

Cites Tagg (1988) on development of portrait photography as part of the development of commodity culture.  The mid-19th century boom in portraiture tapped into the desire to emulate the wealthy and eventually spread across all levels of society.  The demand for portraits possibly stifled creative use of the camera.  President Lincoln used a carte-de-viste as a campaign tool and credited it with his electoral success.

Photo:  Mathew B. Brady. Abraham Lincoln on the day of his speech at the Cooper Union, February, 27, 1860. Carte-de-visite photograph. James Wadsworth Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (046) Digital ID # al0046

Photographer Mathew Brady took this portrait of Abraham Lincoln at his studio in New York City on the same day that Lincoln gave his now-famous Cooper Union address. Brady retouched the photograph, smoothing facial lines and straightening his subject’s “roving” left eye. The effect was striking, and what Lincoln jokingly referred to as his “shadow” later appeared on hundreds of campaign buttons, posters, and small printed cartes-de-visite. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/lincoln/the-run-for-president.html

Photojournalism requires spectacular images to draw attention.  Attention usually translates into sales - of papers or of advertising.  Unfortunately, drama doesn’t always exist in real life and some photographers are not above creating spectacle, and sometimes subjects assist in creating the same to attract attention.  A number of papers and media outlets specialize in the sensational, in selling drama, both of the political and cultural variety.  Celebrity is a major subject, exhibiting polar approaches:  the manicured image and the authentic paparazzi.

Stock photography results in the creation of nondescript images that can be sold a number of times and are therefore capable of carrying multiple meanings.  They have to be technically perfect and use handsome but not terribly noticeable models.  Cites Machin (2004) on these images as no longer witness, but symbol.  The images rely on context entirely to establish meaning.  Two huge corporations now control the stock photography market (Corbis and Getty).  Ramamurthy notes that 2003 searches of its inventory for relaxing floating women returned 1600 images, while searches for labor conflict returned only 77.

Advertising photography has been ignored in traditional histories of photography even though it has produced by far the greatest number of images.   This may be largely because advertising seeks to mimic existing genres rather than create new ones.  Nearly from its inception, the camera has been used to produce images with the intention of stimulating desire, of imbuing products with meaning and characteristics, of helping to fetishize commodities.

Following is a case study of “the grammar of the ad,” an analysis of the subtext of a print ad for a Pakistani telecom.  It features an image of a young, fair-haired, almost anglo-looking man, a popular entertainer, riding across a rather plain, arid landscape in the back of a jeep.  He watches television on his mobile while his more authentic looking north Asian mates are otherwise engaged in conversation or perhaps even a song.  The subtext is one of privilege and affluence in which the young man is able to indulge his aspiration with the latest iteration of global commodity culture.

#