Yesterday in class we looked at images and tried to talk about their meaning and connotations and stuff. The group of images I was looking at were all portraits. Two of them were advertisements. It occurred to me how different the pictures could be interpreted if they had words on them as opposed to being solely images. The first image in the set was pretty ambiguous, nearly all whited out with just the facial features showing. Once I got the idea about advertisements this image really stuck with me in a disturbing way. This girl could be the face of a skin care product. Or a crisis center. I'm not even sure that the face is a girl's face.
The set of images that most interested me was the third set with all of the car pictures. I especially like the United Colors of Benetton advertisement with the car burning. I am really interested in the way advertisements manipulate people, in that it disturbs me. Not that I think that ad was trying to get people to set cars on fire, but that it is supposed to depict, like, what the brand stands for or against or the kind of image you'll have if you wear their clothes. Last semester, I was researching Iraq War protest art and I came across this series of posters. It would be an image of an Iraqi civilian crying or showing some kind of very negative, victimized emotion and then there would be one word like "Liberated" and then in the corner a green tab with the words "United States of America." I knew it was using the Benetton logo but I didn't realize that the store used to advertise with images like these. In context, it's as if the Iraq War images are saying that if you're part of the United States of America, this is what you stand for and this is your image.
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