Photographic Truth in the Digital Era
Year 3 ‘Individual Study’ Proposal Form
Name: Cristina Dan
Provisional Working Title: Photographic Truth in the Digital Era
Description of the Research Area (this should be no less than 500 words):
According to James Brooks, “the manipulation of meaning to assure an audience would destroy the reality of the work and debase the concept of communication.” The essay will examine how images are used nowadays in media to influence people’s opinions rather than only for artistic purposes.
We are constantly surrounded by advertising. The main power of the images is prominent in advertising where experts change images so that they no longer reflect the truth leading to misinterpretation. A strong question is being raised upon this thing whether the advertising world today, in which virtually no image goes untouched by Adobe Photoshop software, is misrepresenting products and their capabilities. Photographs can suffer slight alterations as changing colour into black and white, cropping image, lighten up a photo or dramatic modifications such as changing the ethnicity of a person, make someone look 20 kilograms less or completely changing the aspect of a person or an object.
People nowadays use mass media forms a lot. They read magazines as a leisure activity, they watch commercials either because of the television programme pause, either because they find them fascinating, or they observe posters everywhere without even wanting and they don’t realize how much impact those images have. The majority of the people are vulnerable to the Mass Media techniques that show its dominance in beauty industries, culinary art, tourism, online shopping and other fields that have to do with a daily life of the consumer. Women are conducted by the magazine’s images which create an ideal of perfection and they get to live with the illusion that they could achieve a level of perfection that can only be dreamt of. Our choice of a holiday trip could be influenced by the images
Name: Cristina Dan
Provisional Working Title: Photographic Truth in the Digital Era
Description of the Research Area (this should be no less than 500 words):
According to James Brooks, “the manipulation of meaning to assure an audience would destroy the reality of the work and debase the concept of communication.” The essay will examine how images are used nowadays in media to influence people’s opinions rather than only for artistic purposes.
We are constantly surrounded by advertising. The main power of the images is prominent in advertising where experts change images so that they no longer reflect the truth leading to misinterpretation. A strong question is being raised upon this thing whether the advertising world today, in which virtually no image goes untouched by Adobe Photoshop software, is misrepresenting products and their capabilities. Photographs can suffer slight alterations as changing colour into black and white, cropping image, lighten up a photo or dramatic modifications such as changing the ethnicity of a person, make someone look 20 kilograms less or completely changing the aspect of a person or an object.
People nowadays use mass media forms a lot. They read magazines as a leisure activity, they watch commercials either because of the television programme pause, either because they find them fascinating, or they observe posters everywhere without even wanting and they don’t realize how much impact those images have. The majority of the people are vulnerable to the Mass Media techniques that show its dominance in beauty industries, culinary art, tourism, online shopping and other fields that have to do with a daily life of the consumer. Women are conducted by the magazine’s images which create an ideal of perfection and they get to live with the illusion that they could achieve a level of perfection that can only be dreamt of. Our choice of a holiday trip could be influenced by the images
Bibliography: André Bazins’ ,1980 , “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” Defoore, Jay., 2004"Ethics and Photo Manipulation: a Roundtable" D Gillian, 1982 - London: Routledge, “Advertising as Communication” Jackson, Barry J.W.T Mitchell, 1977, “What do Pictures Want?” Mateo Stocchetti & Sumiala-Seppanen, 2003,” Images and Communities” Roland Barthes, 1980, “”Camera Lucida Roland Barthes, 1957, “Mythologies” Susan Sontag,” On Photography” Martin Lister , Sep 1, 1995, “The Photographic Image in Digital Culture(Comedia) “