Photography and Commodity Culture

Seeing the title, I didn't think I was going to be very intrigued by this chapter, but as it turn out, there were actually many more questions that I raised in this than any other section. Shall we begin?

-One Question I have about fashion photography and its use for advertising is whether or not the production of images, which are in part perpetuated by the advertisements, come from the demands consumers have, or if it is instead the mere power and prestige that these advertisers have by name that can produce the desire. What I mean by the later part is the question of whether or not what is produced can be entirely arbitrary and random, without any base, and only by the 'name-brand' are able to become popularized, or whether it comes from the consumers desires for a specific style that they themselves are unable to fabricate? This is related to photography because it asks then whether or not the images produced for fashion photography are designed from an emptiness, with roots that begin nowhere, or whether they are actually feeding off of and getting their juice from the rest of society.

-"The vast majority of fashion students never visit a factor throughout their degree" (240) What does this day about the production process? Both the production of the consumer items, and the production of images?

-"Tourists, having already consumed an array of exotic and glammored photographs of the place before arrival, search out these very images and sites to visit and photograph in order to feel that their trip is complete... conform to an image which has already been constructed." (242-243)

- H.S. Wong placed a baby next to a bombed out railroad in Shanghai to highlight devastation and desolation. 

It is appropriate to call this documentary? even journalism?

It is the photograph's 'accurate' content which makes it a documentary/journalistic photo, or can an emotion that is portrayed through construction, but is not present 'as is', be also considered a document of such?

- Freimut Dave commented on the portrayal of the US's most recent invasion in Iraq, saying that "a high percentage of people are watching without realizing this is a war" (210)

Could this be a result of having so many photographs and images shown to us on a daily basis, that we become detached from such images and video which really are of people suffering and dying?

Or could it be that we have to experience to relate?

-Machin states that this type of commercial photography is "photography in which there is connotation" (214) lacking denotative qualities, but might this be more of a cultural problem, as we look at like as a more generalized collective rather than focusing on the individual as it is then and there?