You Are Being Manipulated.
It took stumbling onto a random article describing the history of diamond engagement rings to put a crack in the shell of reality I had once known. But it didn't stop at diamonds. I would soon discover that was just the tip of the iceberg.
In the 1920’s Beech-Nut Packing Company had a problem. Sales of one of their products, bacon, had found itself in a slump. To help solve this problem Beech-Nut Packing turned to a man named Edward Bernays. Bernays was a PR mastermind. Nephew of Segmond Freud, he studied and understood the human psyche like few others who worked in the marketing field at the time. The American breakfast had typically been pretty modest: some fruit, a roll, and maybe a cup of coffee, but very rarely did it consist of meat. Bernays saw this as an opportunity. After confirming with a physician that a heavier breakfast might be better for people, they got to work contacting over 5,000 other physicians nationwide getting them onboard with the idea that a heavier breakfast, consisting of bacon and eggs is better than a light breakfast. This “new finding” was published in newspapers and other publications nationwide. Bacon sales skyrocket, and a new habit was formed and the “American breakfast” was born.
While many of us would like to think we are in total control of our own minds, as it turns out, we aren’t. Whether you know it or not, every day mathematicians, psychologists, artists and marketers are working with companies to manipulate your thoughts, feelings and buying habits in order to convince you to purchase their goods. You are being manipulated. And it doesn’t end at consumer goods. Careful marketing strategies and psychological manipulation have changed the habits of entire countries, and altered their perception of what is and always has been “normal.” In this blog post we are going to hear the origins of some of America’s foundational beliefs and see how, or who, helped shape them.
How Long Have Diamonds Been Forever?
While diamonds may be forever, the tradition of diamond engagement rings is actually a fairly recent invention. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the reason so many of us buy diamond engagement rings today is the result of the one the most successful marketing and social manipulation campaigns in American history.
During the 1940’s and 50’s De Beers launched an unprecedented ad campaign that consisted of handing out diamond jewelry to celebrities, visiting schools around America to lecture the importance of giving diamond engagement rings as a sign of companionship and promise, and the launching of the slogan “Diamonds are Forever” to reinforce the idea that marriage means forever. Any you know what? It worked. The number of brides who were given diamond engagement rings grew from just 10% in 1940 to over 80% in 1990. And in just 40 years De Beers went from selling 23 million dollars worth of diamonds in 1939 to selling 2.1 billion dollars worth in 1979. Seeing its success in America De Beers turned it’s sights on Japan, where diamonds sales for engagement rings were less than 5% of all marriages. Once again, it worked. In less than 20 years diamonds engagement rings became the norm, being purchased in over 60% of all engagements and making Japan the second largest diamond market next to the United States.
What is so astonishing about this story is that not only was De Beers able to change the habits and perceptions of an entire country in such a short amount of time, but they were able to TWICE with tremendous success. Now, the practice is so engrained in American culture that the practice of purchasing a diamond engagement ring is hardly questioned, it just is assumed to be the thing you have to do when you get married. Even more interesting is the fact that many do not remember what life was like before this practice even though it was not that long ago.
Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?
I’m a Christian. I grew up assuming that the US was founded as a Christian nation. It’s understandable why we wouldn't assume otherwise. We see reference to God in the Declaration of Independence, we are “one nation, under God” according to the Pledge of Allegiance, and our official motto “in God we trust” is plastered on money, monuments and other American totems. Yet, many scholars seem to agree that the United States was not founded and rooted in Christianity. That this very notion of a “Christian nation” is a relatively recent fabrication.
Christianity undoubtedly played an important role in shaping the country’s history. The Declaration of Independence references God multiple times, most famously proclaiming all men were “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights…” But God is very deliberately left out of the Constitution. In fact one of the foundations of our country is the idea of separation of church and state.
Kevin M. Kruse, professor of history at Princeton University wrote in an article for CNN that religion was deliberately kept at arms length from the state:
“Despite their respect for religion and their belief in the divine origins of human rights, many of the Founding Fathers worried that religion would corrupt the state and, conversely, that the state would corrupt religion.”
Later, the Treaty of Tripoli would reaffirm the US’s stance on it’s relationship with Christianity. As Kruse goes on to say:
“Begun by George Washington, signed by John Adams and ratified unanimously by a Senate still half-filled with signers of the Constitution, this treaty announced firmly and flatly to the world that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” “
Throughout the 1900s there were pushes by multiple christian groups to make America more christian, insisting that America was founded as a christian nation. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that the “under God” portion was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, and “In God We Trust” was adopted as the nation’s official motto and added to paper currency, helping to convince many that America has always a christian nation and it didn’t take long for people to start buying into the concept. Out of it’s 241 year history it wasn't until the 1950s that these changes occurred!
The Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms
America seems to be at a crossroads. While mass shootings perpetrated by American citizens with military-grade weapons is on the rise, two camps have firmly emerged: those who think there should be stricter gun laws, and those who think no one has the right to touch their guns, or limit people’s access to obtaining them. The pro-gun camp has effectively built a solid wall out of the Second Amendment; stating it is their absolute right to bear arms.
2008 marked a tipping point for the pro-gun activists. In the trail District of Columbia vs. Heller the Supreme Court upheld the argument that the second amendment guarantees an individual their right right to bear ams. Interestingly, the majority of judges and scholars before this ruling almost always came to the opposite conclusion: the second amendment only protects gun ownership for the purpose of military duty and collective security. In fact, most Americans before the 1970’s didn’t even think the second amendment referred to an individual’s right to bear arms. So what changed? In his new book The Second Amendment: A Biography, New York University’s Michael Waldman investigates this very question; diving into the history behind the second amendment and how it’s interpretation has changed through the years.
In order to understand the second amendment one must first know exactly what it says:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
It’s crucial to keep in mind that in order to understand context and truly follow what the amendment(s) are meant to say, you cannot pick and choose parts. Many of the current pro-gun lobbyist tend to focus solely on the second half of the amendment leaving out the crucial first half. Even the NRA, who has the amendment inscribed in their lobby, left off the section about the militia. But the militia part is key here. You see there was a large focus on militias at the time of the writing of the amendment. Every man was required to be in a militia, own a gun, and as such, needed to bring it home.
While there was a need for a well armed militia there were also a number of strict gun laws already in place. In Boston you were not allowed to have a loaded gun in your home, there were lots of limits on who could own guns, and regulations on where to your store gunpowder. So, while the second amendment was written to ensure a well armed militia it was not a given that just anyone could own a gun without question or regulation.
According to Waldman, it was in 1977 where things began to change. In the “Revolt at Cincinnati” a small group of intense, dogmatic activists pushed out the current leadership of the NRA and focused their agenda on trying to reinterpret the Second Amendment over a long 30 year campaign centered around marketing, social manipulation and scholarship. As Waldman describes:
“They started with scholarship. They supported a lot of scholars and law professors. They elected politicians. They changed the positions of agencies of government. They got the Justice Department to reverse its position on what the amendment meant. And then and only then did they go to court. So by the time the Supreme Court ruled, it sort of felt like a ripe apple from the tree.”
Through all of this effort not only were agencies, judges and politicians persuaded into believing the second amendment applied to individuals, but the general public was too. Over the 30 years of the NRA’s campaign public beliefs shifted and became more polarized. Parts of the Second Amendment started showing up on t-shirts, and were printed on posters in support of individual gun rights. It became the shield the general public needed to wield in it’s argument for gun rights. The American public, including the many in government, was successfully manipulated.
History Repeats Itself
Social media has undoubtedly changed the way we communicate and with it has brought new ways of manipulation. Many people have stopped taking the time to critically think about the images and information they are being presented. So many people now get their news through memes without any sort of further investigation. As a photographer and graphic designer I know how easy it is to pull an image I have taken out of context, pair it with some text, and make people believe something that simply is not true, and it’s being done all of the time.
While it may not be possible to completely guard yourself against strategies of manipulation we can help ourselves against it’s affects by continuing to teach critical thinking skills and visual literacy. And, even more crucially we must never stop flexing our critical thinking muscle. This is why education like the liberal arts is so important. Learning how to slow down, step back, ask questions, look for answers and form opinions are exactly the skills we need in an age of quick information, sound bites, and memes.
I am nowhere close to an expert on any of this stuff. Most of what I know comes from readings I have done from other experts in the field. If you are interested some articles, here are three places to start:
How An Ad Campaign Invented The Diamond Engagement Ring
Was America Founded As A Christian Nation?
The Second Amendment Doesn't Say What You Think It Does
What Travel Photography has Taught Me About the World
Note: This blog post was originally written and published for The Huffington post. You can see the original article here.
I have been fortunate enough to do a bit of traveling in my life. Starting with my first international trip in college, armed with my camera and a curiosity for the world, I took an immediate liking to travel photography. Over the few years I have been traveling and taking photos I have come to a few realizations about the world around me.
People are inherently good
It’s easy as Americans to sit here and assume that the rest of the world hates us. Watching the news can start to make you feel as though the outside world is a mean, scary place. But guess what? If humans are so horrible, civilization as we know it would have imploded a long time ago. If travel photography has taught me anything it’s that people all over the world are inherently kind, and care for one another. I have a long list of instances where people have come up to me on the streets and offered to help because I looked lost, or confused. They seemed to genuinely care; even in places where we are constantly told the natives are not welcoming (I’m looking at you, France). So don’t be frightened to travel, the world isn’t as terrifying as it might seem on TV.
Photography can be an excuse to engage with culture
Photography can be a great excuse to engage with the culture you are visiting. The thing is, this work doesn’t require you to travel to some far-flung corner of the earth, it could mean engaging with the people at your local Little League game. Photography can give you an excuse to talk with people you may not have otherwise, or visit locations or events you typically wouldn’t have. Photography can be an equalizer. Many of us all over the world enjoy taking pictures. It gives us a common talking point, or if there’s a language barrier it opens up the opportunity to communicate visually. The point being, don’t use the camera as a device to hide behind, use it as a conduit to engage with what is in front of the lens.
Life tends to repeat itself
I’m consistently surprised at how life tends to unfold in front of me in repeatable ways. When I get back from a shoot there are at least a few photos that remind me of photos I have shot before. It doesn’t matter if I am in China or England. Yes, this could partially be because of how I see the world, but I like to think of it as something slightly different. I like to think the reason life repeats itself in my photos is because there is a commonality we all share as humans. Elderly people sit on park benches together, people kiss in the street, parents hold their child’s hand as they walk down the sidewalk—all of these things happen over and over all around the world. The beauty of travel photography is that it forces you to slow down and look. Moments like these may pass you by if you aren’t consciously looking; photography requires you actively observe. Below are images taken in different countries on two different trips that I found to look oddly similar.
Travel allows you to continually fall in love with the place you’re from
Over time people can become disenchanted with the place they live. When you’re shoulder-deep, day in and day out, with life’s struggles, you can lose perspective. I have found that travel photography not only gives me a new perspective on the place I am visiting, it allows me enough space to rediscover what is great about the place that I come from, whether it’s as simple as the beautiful topography of the northeast Iowa countryside or the unlimited free refills of water at restaurants. Traveling always feels great, but I’d be lying if I said that coming back home doesn’t feel pretty fantastic after being away.
Picturing Rural Iowa: The Photographs of Pete Wettach
This article was originally written and published for the Huffington Post. You can read the orignal article here.
It’s the summer of 1936. America is facing one of the most economically devastating periods in its history. A mere seven years earlier, the stock market had collapsed, an event that sent ripples through the world economy, skyrocketing unemployment rates in the United States to 25 percent and crippling the American economy. And then came the drought, choking the Great Plains from any meaningful precipitation. Crops failed and farms withered so badly that the area came to be known as the Dust Bowl. This one-two punch brought much of America to its knees, grasping for some way to rebound from the onslaught of horrible luck and circumstance.
Photographs by Pete Wettach
Funded by the Farm Security Administration and led by Columbia University-educated economist Roy Stryker, a group of intrepid photographers — including heavy hitters such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and Russell Lee, were tasked with the mission of visually documenting the hardships wrought by the Great Depression and drought. They would create what Stryker dubbed a “visual encyclopedia of American life.” In the end, the FSA photographers produced more than 80,000 negatives and some of the most iconic photographs in American history. But this isn’t a story about them. This is a story about an unassuming man in rural Iowa who wound up making one of the most beautiful and prolific sets of photographs showcasing life in Iowa during the Great Depression and beyond.
A photo of Pete with his camera.
Arthur Melvile Wettach was born in New Jersey in 1901. But “Pete,” as he was known, had a fascination with farming that led him to Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where he remained for the rest of his life. Pete, too, worked for the Farm Security Administration, but unlike Evans or Lange, he was hired not as a photographer, but as a county supervisor in the FSA’s tenant farmer program. Pete’s role was to work closely with famers and help them apply for government loans and aid. Yet as much as Pete loved farming, another passion was brewing as a side hobby: photography.
While the well-outfitted, commissioned FSA photography corps were traveling across America documenting life throughout the country, Pete was hauling his large-format Graflex camera everywhere he went in Iowa, photographing the farmers he worked with and the daily Iowa life he knew so well. Unlike Evans or Lange, Pete was not a transient photographer showing up one day to photograph a situation and leaving the next. Pete’s subjects were much closer to him. They were his friends, his neighbors, and his family, allowing him to create uniquely powerful and natural images of his subjects over the many years he knew and photographed them.
My mother grew up just 40 minutes from Pete’s home in Mt. Pleasant. When my mother was a little girl, Pete photographed her and the rest of her family on a number of occasions. She has always spoken very highly of him and recalls fondly the times he came to visit. “Whenever we would look out the windows of our house and see Pete’s car coming down the driveway my parents would get very excited,” she recalled. “My parents loved Pete. Everyone did really, he was so kind and easy to get along with.”
Pete’s memorable characteristics made a mark on his grandson too. Jeff Wettach grew up in Mount Pleasant and remembers outings around town:
“We often got to run errands with Grandpa around town—the post office, the local farm co-operative where he purchased his gasoline, and the drug store. That is where I learned that practically everyone in Mount Pleasant knew Grandpa. He taught us good manners, how to properly greet people, and such. Naturally, we eventually figured out that those fun activities were truly opportunities to learn and to grow, with a pretty special man...I can honestly say that Grandpa’s personal characteristics were impeccable. I never once heard a person say a negative word about Pete Wettach.”
It was perhaps his good-natured, kind personality that allowed Pete to create his remarkable photographs. The comfort level and sense of trust evident in so many of his photographs is hard to deny and would be even harder for an “outsider” to replicate. His subject matter included all aspects of Iowa life: farm work, home routines, children riding tricycles, men shaving, and countless images of livestock. It’s not the number of images or even the subject matter that make Pete’s collection impressive (though it does help), it’s the authenticity that truly makes his images standout. The FSA photography corps may have had the funding and backing of the U.S. government to travel the country, but Pete had the trust and respect of his subjects, along with genuine interest in the life of rural Iowans.
Pete never set out to create a visual history of rural Iowa, that was simply a happy byproduct of his passionate need to photograph the world around him. Unlike today, when cameras are standard hardware on every smartphone and any phone-wielding person can be a citizen journalist, photography in the 1930s was arguably more expensive and technically far more difficult than it is today. It required an investment in chemistry, space for a darkroom, equipment and time. All of which make collections such as Pete’s that much more exceptional.
Pete passed away in the late 1970s but some of his archive was compiled into a wonderful book written by Leslie A. Loveless titled “A Bountiful Harvest.” His family graciously donated many of his estimated 50,000 negatives to the State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City. They were kind enough to allow the use of the images found in this article, and if you would like to see more, they can be found here on their Flickr page.
Rallying Iowa: Notes From a Small College
The headlines would come to read: on Sunday Sanders draws a crowd of 2,000 in a town of 8,000. But here's a version of the story you don't often get.
This post was originally written and published for the Huffington Post. You can see the original post by clicking here.
Bernie Sanders speaks to a crowd of over 2,000 at Luther College on January 24, 2016. Photo by Aaron Lurth
Living in Iowa during election season is a bit like being the unpopular kid at school who just won two all-expense paid tickets to Disneyland: all of a sudden everyone is paying attention to you and wants to be your friend. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a politician these days, and that's what makes election season so fun-- or horribly annoying, depending on how you look at it.
College campuses are naturally a desirable place to hold rallies. Not only do they provide ample locations to house large crowds, they are also home to young voters-- a demographic that typically does not turn out in large numbers to vote, so if you can excite and energize this voter base you could really help your campaign.
Walking on stage with his wife the first thing Sanders proclaims when getting to the mic: "Wow this is a lot of people..."
If you're lucky, a campaign will contact you a couple of weeks in advance (often it's less notice than that) and ask to host an event on campus. You will then begin the process of negotiating space, what your college can provide and what the campaign will need to provide, suggestions on locations to house media, the candidate, and support staff, whether or not they will need a private space to meet with local campaign volunteers….etc. All of this typically runs like a well-oiled machine as most candidates are hosting multiple rallies a day. In the case of Bernie Sanders this past weekend, Luther College was the first stop of four rallies for the day, and three more the following day. Campaigns have this process down to a science.
The night before a crew will come and set up the stage, lighting, sound, chairs, backdrops, flags, banners…all that fun stuff. Logistics on things like parking, locking of doors to limit access, power supply and Internet access for press is all discussed and planned for ahead of time. But not everything can be perfected. For instance, Luther's wireless network simply was not built to handle a huge crowd of thousands of people all trying to connect to the same guest Wi-Fi service at the same time. This caused a problem for the press corps traveling with the Sanders campaign, as they could not reliably connect to the Internet to upload photos and report live from the rally. We did feel pretty bad about that, but there really was little that could be done given the infrastructure that was already in place.
The campaign coordinators were initially estimating about 750 people would attend. They were planning on having roughly 600 chairs in front of Sanders with 150 people sitting behind him on bleachers. Many of us at the college felt this number seemed low, but they were the experts. As people began lining up outside early that morning you could immediately tell that there were far more than 750 people waiting to get in. 2,272 people later, the bleachers and chairs were filled to capacity and the rest of the gymnasium was standing room only. Later that day the turnout provided the catchy headline the media was looking for: Sanders Rally Draws A Crowd of 2,000 in an Iowa Town of 8,000.
The line to get in to the event started early in the morning and persisted for hours. Fortunately it was a mild winter day by Iowa standards.
At this point in the race most campaigns are in image management mode. Rallies like the one held at Luther are carefully staged for photo ops. In back, rising above the crowd sat an elevated platform for photojournalists. Shooting from the platform is akin to photographing Disneyland from Disney's "picture spot" locations. The scene is a ready-made image carefully crafted by the campaign, complete with hand-selected diversity sitting in the background under the national and state flags. Any good journalist would desire a more authentic documentation of the event, so you do your best to shoot from as many vantage points as allowed.
After an hour of speaking the event is over in a flash and the candidate, along with the press corps and support staff, slips out of the venue onto their bus and move on to the next rally of the day. It has to be an unimaginably grueling schedule and one that I'm impressed can be sustained for so long. The event contractors tear down the stage and pack away the chairs at lightening speed in order to move on to the next location, and just like that normalcy returns to our sleepy little town of 8,000. That is until three days later, when our town gets to do the whole thing again for another political candidate.
Side note: I believe there's a misconception out there on how exactly hosting political rallies (on college campuses) work. I can't speak for every college but I can speak from my experience at Luther College. Luther makes it very clear that they do not endorse anyone one political candidate or party. Instead the college sees itself as simply a possible venue that is willing to host pretty much anyone who would like to come and hold an event. What seems to have people riled-up on social media is the fact that the two political candidates Luther has hosted this year are both democrats, and so many think the college is forcing some liberal agenda on to their students. This could not be further from the truth. In fact, back in September Luther sent a general open invitation to all of the major candidates expressing our willingness to host them if they were ever to find themselves in this part of the state. So far, the college has hosted every candidate who has asked to come. Two republican candidates (Ted Cruz and Carly Fiornia) were planning on holding events on campus but backed out because the timing wasn’t right and/or they wanted to host something more intimate in town. Luther can't force all political candidates who come to Decorah to hold their rallies on campus, nor do they actively recruit/approach anyone to come; the college accommodates those who ask to host an event. People are quite passionate about religion and politics so it's no surprise that a college such as Luther gets reamed on social media for posting about either of those topics but as an institution of higher learning, steeped in the liberal arts tradition, offering opportunities for students to engage with a variety of ideas, viewpoints and opinions is exactly what is needed when fostering skills of critical thinking and self-reflection.
Sing Your Heart Out
For 34 years Luther College has been performing it's world-class, Emmy winning Christmas show for thousands of it's devoted fans. Eleven years ago I photographed my first show. Here are a few images from this year's 2015 show, "Savior of Nations, Come."
““Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.””
Eleven years ago I walked into the Center for Faith and Life on Luther College's campus armed with my cameras and a selection of lenses. It was my freshman year and I was sent there to photograph Christmas at Luther. I have to admit, I had no idea what this performance was or just how big of a deal it is. Heck, I don't even like choral music and I'm quite well known as the person who highly dislikes Christmas music. But this is Luther's flagship performance and as I was about to discover, there's a reason why Christmas at Luther is an Emmy award-winning program.
Every year there seems to be at least one point in the program that gives me goose bumps. I've never been a singer, so I can't tell you anything about what I am hearing, but I can say that being literally surrounded by hundreds of musicians all singing in perfect harmony (or at the very least what sounds like perfect harmony to these untrained ears) can evoke quite an overwhelmingly joyful sensory experience.
Photographing the show has always posed a number of challenges. First, because the college records the show live every night, and we take such great pride in the audience's experience of the show, my team cannot take photos during the actual performances. Therefore, we are allowed just one opportunity to capture images from the dress rehearsal. So there's a bit of pressure to do it right the first time as there's no second chance. The conditions in which we photograph are also quite challenging. The program is lighted to create a moody, magical ambiance. When we photographers hear those terms we instantly think, "Okay, that means it's going to be dark, dimly lit with spotty/harsh lighting." And boy, is it. I also tend to have a bit of a challenging time coming up with new ways to photograph the thing I have now shot over the course of 11 years. I wrack my brain to walk the balance between getting new, unique shots while also being sure I capture the images the college needs. For me, this challenge extends beyond C@L. Many of the things I help photograph are the same events year after year. It definitely becomes harder each year to figure out new perspectives and ways of covering the same event. But that's also part of the fun of it.
Here are a few select images from this year's show.
When Fantasy Meets PR
Sometimes taking what you love about medium and seeing if you can adopt and adapt that into other fields you are involved in can prove to be a fruitful endeavor. I don't know just quite yet if this is one of those times, but we're working on figuring that out.
I've walked an odd line for most of my photography career. You see, all of my formal education is in fine arts; earning three degrees in eight years, all from majors that I have been told have no real world job prospects/applications. Yes, I navigated my way through eight years of classes that included topics such as Scandinavian Fine Handcrafts, Weaving, Marketing and Politics of Public Art, Typography, and many more that baffle and confuse non art majors who hear the titles. The fact that I took these classes or have three art degrees is not that odd. What is perhaps a bit unique is that I did all of this while working commercially in marketing. So you see I have all of my formal education in the fine arts but my working background is deeply rooted in public relations and marketing. It's this particular duality that I believe has heavily influenced the way I work, what my work looks like, and how I think about myself both as an artist and a marketing professional.
One of the core things I love about photography is its ability to show us a reality that cannot be perceived by or own eyes. It's this ability that drives me to shoot so often at night and has comprised a large percentage of my personal artwork. Oftentimes my artistic interests and my marketing job feel as though they live mutually exclusive lives. So it was something of a new mode of operation when I began thinking up ways to potentially capture campus, and came to the conclusion that perhaps bringing my love of blending fantasy with reality by taking long exposures of campus during the day may very well be a viable solution. Sometimes taking what you love about a medium and seeing if you can adopt and adapt that into other fields you are involved in can prove to be a fruitful endeavor. I don't know just quite yet if this is one of those times, but we're working on figuring that out.
These are the results of my first few attempts. It's a process I'm still learning, and hopefully refining/improving on over the coming months. It's still unclear whether from a marketing aspect we will ever find use for these images (sometimes my colleagues find this kind of stuff "too artsy") but in this line of work it's important to continuously experiment, think outside the box, and push yourself to see things differently.
