Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture Pages 200-220

        In these pages of the textbook the first thing that I read about that was really interesting was about propaganda and how reproduction allows images to circulate with political meaning. I have heard and learned about propaganda before, but never really put two and two together. The only way for propaganda to survive is through images. The increased ability of images is to captivate and persuade which is basically the definition of propaganda. Another piece of this I found interesting was the issues of copyright and ownership that goes along with images and propaganda. Even though the audience is allowed to feel certain emotions and loyalty toward the images they see, for all audiences to see the image needs to be copied and distributed worldwide. "The proliferation of images through reproduction also means that images can be more easily accompanied by different kinds of text, which can dramatically change the signification of the image". Propaganda can be changed from city to city with the same intention of meaning, but the meaning can change so much, especially when text in added. The codes and laws of copyright and ownership not only regulate the amount and flow of copies, but also shapes peoples minds and ideas about what constitutes a legitimate use of a copy and what constitutes to be unlawful. "The Fair Use Doctrine (made law in the Copyright Act of 1976) permits copying without permission of the copyright holder in certain limited cases" (pg. 208). I thought this was interesting because who decides who gets to regulate these laws and say which "certain cases" are legitimate and which aren't. In the reproduction and the digital image section it talks a lot about cameras and photoshop. Cameras allowed the photographer to see the image immediately after taking the photograph, allowing "instantaneous pleasure of the image". With the advancement of computer programs like photoshop everyone is now allowed to edit, enhance, correct and manipulate an image in order to alter its composition, framing, color and combinations of elements and scenes. It has always been a possibility to fake realism in photographs with constructed scenes made from our imagination.