I found chapter three incredibly intriguing because it raised many ideas that I simply had not thought about, such as the start of pornography, family albums, and personal-use photography. I enjoyed the section which discussed carte-de-visite, the "visiting cards" people would have made for themselves which eventually evolved into many people collecting cards of famous people. I think it is interesting that people have always been interested in obsessing over celebrities.
I also found it really fascinating to think about how photography was able to unveil many of the exotic far-away places (such as Asia, the Middle East, and Africa) that most European people would never actually be able to visit. It makes me wonder how this photography, which was taken at a period in time where racism and a "us" vs. "them" mentality was fairly normal, differs from contemporary photography found in publications such as National Geographic. I wonder how much photography today differs, because I imagine that people still have the tendency to over-emphasize a population's differences in order to achieve some strange sort of romantical view of exoticism.
No comments:
Post a Comment