Image analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Image analysis - Essay Example Twitchell suggests that the human condition is one in which we have been inherently materialistic making us susceptible to the images we see. â€Å"We have always been desirous of things. We have just not had many of them until quite recently, and, in a few generations, we may return to having fewer and fewer† (Twitchell 471-472). However, in this material culture, where so many things are mass-produced in a variety of forms and substances, it is helpful to have some sort of guide to help us determine which things should be accorded the highest value and which things are not so great. This is where advertising enters the scene and helps us to define just what is valuable and what kind of meaning or history a particular object might have. It takes advantage of this natural human tendency to want to be comfortable and to have stuff to own, trade, protect or produce. However, despite our desire for increasingly more ‘stuff’, we nevertheless insist on being entertaine d if we are to pay attention to the message or the products it’s associated with. As a result, if advertising is to be effective, it must first appeal to the consumer in an entertaining or meaningful way, such as in the image taken by Peter Knapp in 1971. A basic description of this photograph reveals a greater than expected complicity. Upon first looking at the image, one is able to recognize a very pretty dark-haired girl with somewhat unusual features looking out of the page with an unfocused expression. Her face is heavily made up in what probably is underdone for the 70s generation. Her hair falls below her shoulders with somewhat messy curls gathering on her upper chest, but it does not extend longer than her armpit area. She has rich, peacock blue eye-shadow covering her eyelids which makes her seeming lack of eyebrows more prominent. She also has spots of pink rouge covering her cheeks in a way that looks less