We all know the saying that a picture is worth a thousandwords. Thats probably why many of you are intophotography. And you should all know that, dependingupon how a photographer frames, er, takes his picture, hecan make his subject look sympathetic or make it appeardark and ominous. Think about how photographersin different centuries portrayed industrialization. Theirattitudes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries werealmost completely different, which is reflected in theirwork.
Photography as we know it was invented in thenineteenth century. And this is important, for this wasthe century when industrialism was really starting to takeoff. But you know what？ These advances frightenedpeople. They thought the world was changing tooquickly. So photographers were often quite critical ofindustrialism. They took more photographs of nature andpeople instead. They focused mostly on humanity at theexpense of industrialism. Those pictures that did showindustrialism often emphasized peoples dirty, worn, andhopeless faces after theyd worked in the factories all dayor other such negative representations.
The twentieth century, however, saw a dramatic changein attitudes. People began to, uh, celebrate industrialism.Photographers therefore started taking more pictures ofmachines and other tools of industrialization. Not onlydid they increase the numbers of pictures they took, butthey also made sure the pictures showed machines inthe best possible light. Here... See this picture inside anautomobile factory？ Notice how clean everything is andhow the people are smiling as they do their jobs. Thispicture is typical of twentieth-centurys attitudes towardindustrialization. It meant to honor industrialization, not todemonize it.
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