Fine Art Center

Robert Polidori, Looking East, 42^nd Street, New York, 2002

 

New York City, the city that never sleeps, the big apple, City so nice they named it twice. New York City is one of the most well know cities in the world, it is also one gigantic billboard with advertisements for anything your heart desires. This picture of the city high lights Berger’s critical thought on our modern consumerist society through “publicity” or “advertisement”.

Berger uses the term Publicity in place of advertisement, and points out the fact of these images surrounding us as unique to our modern society. According to Berger “Publicity images belong to the moment” in terms of the length of time we view them and how often it needs updated, and refer not to the present but the future. As consumerist we are bombarded by these images in passing, and at times you feel as if you are standing still in a swirling sea of billboards, newspapers, and magazines telling you what you must look/dress like tomorrow. It gives us the false assumption of being richer by possessing more.  

Envy, glamour, and publicity are relationships seen by Berger. Transformation by consumption is something highlighted by publicity to be desirable, which in turn leads to publicity manufactured glamour. “Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure” (Berger) which is real. Although this is not real pleasure, but a happiness promised to be gained by the envy of others. These ads in Polidori’s photo of 42^nd street scream to us that change is needed, a change of who we are, and who we should be. If only I change into those GAP clothes or if only I had that Louis Vuitton bag, they will all like me. Advertising plays off the fact that there is no substitute for pleasure, and caters not to the present, but future consumers. Leaving consumers to dream about what they are missing.

  Polidori captures in his photo not only the beauty of New York City, but also what it means to be Americans in today’s society. We work hard for what we have, and in turn we fall prey to the advertising around us begging us to just look at it one time, hoping we are curious enough to buy its product. This keeps our capitalistic society alive. “Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible…it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.”(Berger)  

Citation

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. 1st ed. . England: British broadcasting corporation and Penguin books, 1972.