Case Study: The Commodification of Human Relations and Experience

When looking at advertising photographs from the 1900’s it is clear to see the affect a time period plays in an ad. The current social and economic status of a country determines what the intended message is the ad is trying to convey to the public as well as the viewers response to the ad. The article goes into great depth about the role of the publisher and the viewer and how these can differ depending on one’s personal experiences. For example, Barthes proposed that there is a denoted (factual element) and connoted (inferred message) in every advertisement. All advertisements have a purpose, to provoke attention to a specific brand, event or topic to begin with but they also have to serve the purpose of getting one’s attention and persuading the viewer to do the intended action in response to viewing the photograph. In the photograph of Ali Zafar for the Telenor’s Mobile TV ad, we can see the different elements of an image put to use. For example, in looking at visual signs we can see that the cell phone is an object conveying a message about the social and economic status of Zafar and base the narrative of the photograph off of other suggestive cues in the image such as the other characters, the blue lines, the rugged jeep, etc. It is clear to see that different people would read this image differently based on what they know about Pakistani culture and whether or not they are familiar with Zafar. Stuart Hall explains the importance of conveying a purposeful message in an advertisement, “images are first ‘encoded’ by the producer and then ‘decoded’ by the viwer. The transfer of meaning in this process only works if there are compatible systems of signs and symbols which the encoder and decoder use within their cultural life.” Different experiences or beliefs such as religion, sex, education, socio-economic status, etc. can dramatically effect the way one person reads an image compared to another person. In this way, photographers can also restrict the way in which people view an image by using elements such as text to in a sense, control how one begins to think about an image. One can also use effects such as digital photography, black and white or editing techniques to transfer a certain message to viewers.