Dr. Natasha Josefowitz.
(2014). Consumed By Our Consumer Society. Available:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-natasha-josefowitz/consumed-by-our-consumer-_b_6329190.html.
Last accessed 8th Jan 2015.
In this article Dr. Natasha Josefowitz talks about the difference
between needing, and wanting something. She talks about impulse buying, and how
we don’t take any time to think about what we are buying, just that we want it.
She says how buying something on impulse you want ‘triggers the pleasure centers
of your brain’ and makes you feel happy. She brings up the point that sometimes
‘the lines are too often blurred between "need" and "want."
And sometimes we forget what’s important, and go for the things we want instead
of vital things we need. Being able to buy something without thought, at the
time may make us feel happy, but afterwards may give us a sense of regret.
Jocelyn K. Glei. (2011).
Is Consumerism Killing Our Creativity?. Available:
http://99u.com/articles/6775/is-consumerism-killing-our-creativity. Last
accessed 5th Jan 2015.
This article talks about how consumerism may affect are ability to
be creative. She talks about how ‘As creatives, we can often rationalize
spending time on shopping by telling ourselves that we’re investing our time,
energy, and money in a new tool – an item that’s going to catapult our
creativity to the next level.’ Something as simple as shopping, can cause us to
be distracted, we can find ourselves looking online for useless objects rather
than getting on with our own creative work. Jocelyn Glei talks about how ‘things
keeping me from pushing my creative projects forward.’ She talks about how she
feels about addiction to consumerism affecting her own work. She brings up the
idea that if we have ‘less to work with, we have to be more creative’ which I
find to be true. The less distractions around us, the more we could get done
and be more creative.
Lauren Greenfield – Kids +
Money.
Lauren Greenfield is an acclaimed documentary
photographer/filmmaker, who is considered a leader for of youth culture, gender
and consumerism. Kids + Money is short film that discusses with young people
from many different Los Angeles communities about the role of money, and how it
affects their lives. The teen girls and boys talk about money, about getting
money, shopping, learning to live without it, and how they are shaped by the
culture of consumerism. It shows how important money has become, not to just
adults, but children. They want to spend, or save, or aim to get more, and I find
this surprising. I would never have thought until seeing this, that money was
such a bit thing in a child life. Maybe this is just in the LA area, and not in
my own surroundings, but to think that kids are thinking these serious matters
in their teenage years is shocking to me. I want to talk about my own
relationship with spending; concentrating on how I feel encouraged buying
things after watching YouTube videos.
Eds. Thomas Seeling, Urs
Stahel (2005). The Ecstasy Of Things. Denmark: Steidl. 159-228.
This book collects photographs, which were unearthed from worldwide
companies and agencies. The book is full of illustrations and annotations
showing the emotional and symbolic content of how things were once represented.
The book is a collection of design and a photographic history of the past
century. I particularly liked the photographs of two models, one being Jayne
Mansfield, and advertising Lufthansa luggage bags. This shows how in the 1950’s
and 60’s, well known people and celebrities were used to advertise products.
Without the use of the Internet, this would have been the way to attract new
customers and increase consumerism. Other parts of the book, such as page 159
talk about how the body had become a more popular subject in the 20th
century. Also how ‘cosmetics of all kinds, from lipstick to shavers, intended
to beautify the outward appearance of the body’ were becoming more and more
popular at the time.
Martin Lindstrom (2011).
Brandwashed. New York: Crown Business . 1-304
In this book, Martin Lindstrom turns the spotlight on his own
industry. He talks about all that he has witnessed behind closed doors during
his time at work, exposing for the first time the full extent of the tricks
that companies devise to win our own money. He talks about how companies are ‘secretly
mining our digital footprints to uncover some of the most intimate details of
our private lives’ and they are then using the information they collect to
target us with ‘perfectly tailored’ ads and offers. Some of the ‘tricks’ that
Lindstrom talks about, most of us are aware of anyway. We know that companies
know what we search for, and use this to their own advantage. It makes you feel
less secure, and understand how companies can invade your privacy online.
Sannah Kvist – All I Own
Sannah challenges young adults to pack the entirety of their
possessions into one sculptural creation, and she then captures them in her
images. The image starts to take shape by having the subject collect all of
their furnishings and objects, and then pile them up into a sculpture. The
individuals have total freedom to design the the pile of possessions they
have. All of the people who have been
photographed were born in the 1980s. Sannah says this was the most important stipulation
of the All I Own project, that they were around the same age as her. They would
be likely to have the same type of possession, be in the same time in their
lives that need certain things, something she shows in her images. These images
show that people can cope with little possessions, these images don't show if
the individual is happy, but they have learnt how to cope with the things they
have.