Introduction

Welcome! The purpose of my creating this blog is to have a space where I can share my anthropologically grounded insights and ideas on contemporary uses of photography. My main focus, for now, will be photography as it functions in advertising.

I am most interested in advertisement that spins postmodern stylings to sell products. For those familiar with the publication, Adbusters, we understand postmodernism as criticism of the advertising world. Yet, for the past few years at least, advertisers have been employing more postmodern styling that commodify the photographic techniques used by critics of advertising. This is not necessarily new, but what is notable, to me anyway, that there are layers of desire and guile built in to these images. Some of the advertising that uses postmodern styling that I will be looking at does the following: It propagates an idea or a feeling; it criticizes itself; it argues for the value of itself.

While my analysis of this so far may be over-simplifying, I still see this is an exceptional turn in advertising, but what I find most fascinating is it is not limited to consumer advertising, e.g. adverts we see in fashion magazines or newspapers. What I have found is that these images are commonplace and even exaggerated in periodicals directed at company employees. Not quite trade magazines, but similar, these company periodicals are aimed at promoting company ideology amongst their workforce. Consequently, many of the photographic images have a pronounced propaganda feeling to them. They don't just try to sell a product or a company, they are selling an ideology.

The first set of images that I will be posting are from the magazine, Good Fun, published by Frito-Lay, Inc. I was only able to obtain these because I am an employee of Frito-Lay, so I hope I will be able to provide a unique perspective on these images and their social function because I am familiar with the culture of Frito-Lay.

I understand that by making this blog public I may be putting myself at some risk. While my analysis is intended to be observational, it will undoubtably become critical and the company I work for may not like that very much. So be it. To some extent, this blog is me going public about what I have observed during my time at Frito-Lay. This is not to say that that it is all negative, but it is certainly not the idyllic scene that Good Fun has painted for us.