24 March, 2008

advertising as cultural anthropology

I have been away from the blogging world for quite a while. There came a point where I realized that I was a "member" of too many things. That happened in college...you don't want to miss anything so you are a part of everything...it got dull and I couldn't keep up with all of the things that I was on, 'cause, let's face it; I'm technologically fickle. I don't want to be able to be contacted anywhere, anytime, while I'm doing anything, but I do want it when I want it, ya know? Typical American.
So, I've been rather sleepless lately, which normally I would complain about, but it has given me a lot of time to think about my life and the lives of those that I'm around. I'm naturally drawn to the actions of people: watching them, observing, generalizing, predicting, comparing, interpreting, etc. I find it a fascinating subject of study. That would explain my draw to both photography and advertising. As a young adult I found a fascination with interviewing people (As in the case of a dean at school, I researched his past and present and went in with a list of questions and deductions that I had made from that research). I love the artistic interpretation that I can insert with photography and advertising is using all of that to target the people that you observe in order to influence their spending. All this to say that I am really just a cultural anthropologist stuck in a capitalist economic environment.

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