The Image Factory Consumer Culture, Photography and the Visual Content Industry

by Frosh, Paul

• ISBN13: 9781859736425
• ISBN10: 1859736424
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Quietly but implacably, powerful transnational corporations are gaining power over our visual world. A 'global, visual content industry' increasingly controls images supplied to advertisers, marketers and designers, yet so far the process has, paradoxically, evaded the public eye. This book is the first to expose the interior workings of the visual content industry, which produces approximately 70% of the images that define consumer cultures. The corporate acquisition of major photographic and film archives, as well as the digital rights to much of the worlds fine art, is having a profound effect on what we see. From stock photography to new technologies, this book powerfully engages with the historical and cultural issues relating to visual culture and new media. How has stock photography, the system of renting out ready-made images, transformed the role of marketing and advertising? What impact are digital technologies having on the practices of industry professionals? How have software programs such as Photoshop enabled professionals to play God with photographs and how does this influence our belief in the integrity of images? Combining original research on stock photography with a new theoretical take on the circulation of images in contemporary culture, The Image Factory provides a comprehensive and in-depth exploration of industrialized commercial photography, its uses and abuses.

Author Biography

Paul Frosh is Lecturer, Department of Communication and Journalism, at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	xiii
1 Minds, Brains, and Multiple Realizability	1	(38)
2 The Illusion of Contingent Identity	39	(32)
3 Varieties of Functionalism	71	(40)
4 Realization and Generic Functionalism	111	(28)
5 Functional Realizations	139	(42)
6 Functional Properties and Mechanistic Explanations	181	(32)
7 Dennett's Challenge	213	(28)
8 Minds, Brains, and Persons	241	(6)
Notes	247	(24)
References	271	(18)
Index	289