I was 11 years old, walking to my middle school when I bent down to tie my shoe near a bus stop. When I looked up, I noticed the advertisement behind the glass. It was a photograph of a young boy sitting on a brownstone stoop, with the caption, “Its 9 AM, do you know where your kids are?”. In episode one of Ways of Seeing, Berger talks about how reproduced images can be warped and manipulated anyway one sees fit, and how that image can have a completely different meaning than the original when put into the right context. Without those bold letters of that caption, it could have very well been an advertisement pushing back to school clothes, or even an ad for a DS. If I had seen that child sitting on those steps at nine o’clock with my own eyes, I would have thought nothing of it. However, with that quote on the photo, it gave the image a more serious and urgent tone, a warning to anyone with a young child. Turns out the ad was a campaign to boost attendance in New York City schools with the hope of limiting the number of drop outs per year. As Berger said, cameras made it possible for images to convey all kinds of messages. That image sent out a very powerful message, which would have otherwise been just an average child sitting on his apartment steps. 

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