Photography, Style, and Money...

A whole lot of reading this week, starting with Part One - Chapters 2 and 3 in "All Comsuming Images". This will be quite short due to not having an understanding of the whole thing.

In chapter 2, "Goods and Surfaces", Ewen talks about how photography and how someone can interpret as something that can apply to your way of thinking and how you can look. For example, a portrait of a women in a gown. If someone looks at the portrait, that person will keep it burned in their memory because its the way we can see the world or how the man who invented photography Oliver Wendell Holmes would say. The idea of images in another era sparked a interest in style just by looking at fashion through portraits and started a market in
high quality goods towards nobles and anyone in the upper class and only rags for the peasants. It was a law, but after every century, images start to have an impact and what an individual should look like and hence the business grows to what people buy to improve their image. This led to the Industrial Revolution and slavery which increased productivity and also upgrade to better fashion designs and better architecture. In the end, the looks on the surface are all that matters rather than what's going on underneath.

In chapter three, "The Marriage Between Art and Commerce", Ewen continues what began as a simple look in fashion and design into a enterprise with high productivity and an increase in developing companys and corporations. Advertising was the main force between style and making money. Advertising agencies used the impact of images to attract comsumers to buy not only clothes but other items such as lamps, radios, television, and other goods. This was after all the American way of life. Earnest Elmo Calkins first created the idea about how the ad should be appealing as well as the products, get both right and the consumer will come in spending. With all the advertising attracting consumers with superficial items it can take a terrible turn as Holmes in the past predicted that "the ephemeral surface would soon overwhelm the objective world in the pages of the same magazine." This lead to extreme spending on luxury and having less money which resulted in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. In the end, style will always
change and always will be.

My thoughts after reading these chapters are somewhat the same as I felt about style in the "First Assignment". Except that you know the consequences about spending money on crap you really don't need and about the Crash, its already like that right now except its a bit different. These days the money is mainly spent on the war and bailing out company's but the real issue is on high prices for any products including high class merchandise like iPods and Blackberrys. In the end, the desire for the item you want is the cost you pay yourself.