Susan Sontag’s On Photography brings to attention how photographs evolved to what they have become today. Photographs started out as a way of capturing a moment of time. They were more a part of the world captured at one moment of time than they were an interpretation of the world. Photographs were used from surveillance to a form of art or hobby. From there photography evolved into a more transcendent art form, pictures with meaning.

Walt Whitman tried to capture regular unordinary objects and show their beautiful side. As quoted in Sontag’s On Photography “each precise object or condition or combination or process exhibits a beauty.” I can relate to this as a hobby of mine is working with cars. With that come interests in photography of cars. And from my personal experience, a regular picture of my car can seem plain and simple, but when a professional photographer captures a car identical to mine, the photographer can produce the beautiful side of the object.

Another type of photography evolved is Arbus’s work. Her photographs capture the ugly side, or the abnormal side of life. She likes to take pictures of things that are not of the norm. Such photos include the circus, nudes, and a boy marching for pro war. Her artwork is another defined aspect of the possibilities of photography. Although photography started strictly as documents capturing one moment of the world at one particular time, its has evolved into a image capable of inflicting a sense of emotion and connection.

The Corporation

In the film “The Corporation", it is brought to the peoples attention that big corporations are doing whatever it takes in order to take in as much profit as they can. They achieve their goal by creating this sense of culture and identity. The big corporations of today are the result of well planned engineering creating a culture and identity that you must belong to. In Klein’s “No Logo”, she makes her idea clear that corporations are not trying to sell their product, but their brand name, their logo. With stronger attachments to a sense of identity and culture, come bigger profits for monster corporations. The idea of selling a brand as discussed in “No Logo” helped create these big corporations. First there were magazines, then these magazines were able to be produced at large quantities at a time and be purchased over a large group of population. And within these magazines distributed out to the masses came advertisements telling people what they should behave like, and with that came a sense of culture and identity. And as a sense of culture and identity began to grow stronger, so did corporations, and that leads to Mark Achbar’s film, “The Corporation”.

To me, the film is a continuation on the idea of culture and identity and how it has affected the world. It goes on about how out of control corporations have gone with this sense of culture and identity. It has come down to the point where as long as the corporations get their profits, it does not matter who or what gets hurt in the process. Corporations tell you how you should live, and at the expense, children in Third World countries are working for a few cents an hour and pollution is rising.

Corporations can also be seen as more powerful than the government now. Corporations have the capacity to influence the people with a greater impact. Having such power left unchecked lets them do whatever that pleases them. Even though it has been brought to the worlds attention of child labor in Third World countries and their unfair payment, it seems as though very little has been done about it. A similar issue brought up in the film was with the hormonal drug administered to cows in order to produce more milk. Despite how harmful it was to the animals and potentially to the people, this big corporation was able to shut the media up and continue reaping its profits. After watching the video it seems as though the corporation has been able to mask itself as a harmless company out to provide people with what they want, when in reality, so many people are being treated unfairly and the environment being neglected. And despite efforts, the corporation has been able to keep this mask on and grow its profits.

my thoughts on No Logo

Naomi Klein's No Logo is almost like a continuation of Ohman's ideas in Selling Culture. Ohman introduces us to the corporate world and its ways with advertising. It goes into how advertising has a way of making us wants things we do not particularly need. This advertising then leads the world towards a culture industry. Klein then takes it into detail a bit more. She brings up the topic of brands. I always felt as though brand names played a big role today more than ever, but I never gave it any serious thought. Klein goes on to talk about how brand names are very different from advertising, and at first Ithought they went hand in hand, but she has made a very good point. She distinguishes the two by considering the "brand" the ultimate goal, and "advertising" as just a way to promote it. I never looked at a brand as the item being sold and not the actual product.

A great example she brings up is the name Tommy Hilfiger. It is true how a logo or brand name can completely change an item. A shirt is just a shirt until you stamp " Tommy Hilfiger" on it, then it becomes something more and all of a sudden its high in demand. And the idea that it is not the product but the name that is being sold is clearly represented here. Tommy Hilfiger does not manufacture anything, companies who make jeans, to shirts, to footwear use his name just because it adds something more than just the physical item you are buying. And in the end, you will want to buy the Tommy Hilfiger sweater over an identical no brand sweater. This is the culture industry at its best. Using advertising to create abstract ideas connected to a logo or brand name, then telling the people this is how you should behave.