CS100 Lecture Notes - Susan Sontag, On Photography
Document Summary
Image technologies and the emergence of mass society. Rosalynd williams, dream worlds of consumption : the paris exposition or world fair, 1900. Peruvian go to bed in the same sleeping car . the universe in a garden!: the exposition of 1900 provides a scale model of the consumer revolution, great increase in emphasis on merchandising, but the important change was how this merchandising was now accomplished by appealing to the fantasies of the consumer, fantasy which openly presents itself as such keeps its integrity and may claim to point to truth beyond everyday experience. but fantasy used as an alluring handmaiden of commerce loses its independence, a corruption of dreams, a pleasurable escape from the work world is a sales pitch in disguise, from earliest history we find indications that the human mind has transcended concerns of physical survival to imagine a finer, richer, more satisfying life.
