As been schduled, “this week” we should working on some materials from the textbook.
Photography was developed in Europe in the early 19th century, when concepts of positivist science held sway. Positivism involves the belief that empirical truths can be established through visual evidence. This is a nonfigurative idea, in my opinion, is something that is proved by scientist or the majoruty part of public. For instance, someone said he saw an UFO in a summer night, how many people will belive his word. Only if he took a photo of it, and some scientists testified according to the shape, lightness of the object, then tell the public it is might be an UFO. This is what does photograph represent-a method of producing images that involves a mechanical recording device (the camera) rahter than hand recording (pencil on paper).
An image can has many different meanings through different individuals, with respect to their education, culture, religions.
What can you read from the image above? It is shows that a car just run away, but its image still reflected in the water on road. For my understanding, the car stands for high speed, it has a powerful engine. This is relate to ideology. The most important aspect of ideologies is that they appear to be natural or given, rather than part of system of belief that a culture produces in order to function in a particular way. Ideologies are influenced through the social institutions in a given society, such as family, education, medicine, the law, the government, and the entertainment industry, among others. In this image, the car is the signifier, and powerful may be the signified. The image and its meaning together form the sign. The production of a sign is dependent on social, historical, and cultural context. In morden society, the requirement of an vehicle is getting as specific as possible. Rather than a good external looking it must has a powerful engine, comforable seats, options on automatic or mannual gearshift and so on. Vehicle manufacturers have to satisfy custmers by providing different ranks of cars and making attractive Ads.
The capacity of images to affect us as viewers and consumers is dependent on the larger cultural meanings they invoke and the social, political, and cultural contexts in which they are viewed.
