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The illusion of inexhaustible completeness which identified a fine photograph of the old-fashioned sort hooked the viewer by the eyes, as the Ancient Mariner captured the wedding guest, and pulled him into the picture as an object of contemplation. The good modern mass media picture on the other hand is less like seduction and more like rape. Its object is to make its point now and quickly. It is rare when we return to a magazine picture to find its second level of meaning, and there is no case on record of people stopping their cars to exhaust the content of a bill-board.
John Szarkowski, “Photography and the Mass Media” (Dot Zero, 1967) via American Suburb X
