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October 25, 2005
Social Context as Determined by Photography
After re-reading part of chapter 4 of Practices of Looking I came to the conclusion that our social context is indeed determined by our sense of Photography. I think that this has a lot to do with media influences that are pretty much enforced upon our society in a somewhat discreet manner. Magazines are definitely a source of strong media influence and pictures are able to easily influence people, which in term social context.
Social context is really just ideas and perceptions that individuals have about appearances, actions, and practices. Basically pictures can represent all of these ideas in one. This can be especially expressed in terms of advertisements. Advertisment display life as people think that it should be. Like people having perfect bodies and figures, and also clothing. This creates people who think that they have to resemble this image, which is a part of a superimposed social context. Our social context is determined by pictures, because just like the phrase "monkey see, monkey do", people usually to tend to do what they see, especially if it is promoted on a mass scale.
Our social context is determined by mimicking ideas or perceptions. This is why people change their style of hair, dress, and the usual places where they hang out. Pictures determine most of these aspects, because they show what is fashionable and what should not be done. Where people should live and where people have no business being. Without pictures most of the ideas that we have today would not be as well known, except for the fact that technology has advanced so that we not only have photographs about what's going on around the world and locally, but that we have moving images that we can see live and understand what social context our world is becoming a part of. Today this is definitely shown through the more liberal ideals that American society represents.
--Yasmin
Posted by lcisperez at October 25, 2005 04:00 PM