Image Worlds

By viewing the corporation as a communicator, Image Worlds links the
histories of labor, business, consumption, engineering, and photography, providing a
new perspective on one of the largest and most representative corporations. General
Electric was one of the first modern industrial corporations to use photographs and
other media resources to create images of itself; and the GE archives, comprising
well over a million images, form one of the largest privately held collections in
the world. To produce this venturesome book, David Nye has used these vast archives
to develop a new approach to corporate ideology through corporate iconography.Image
Worlds embraces symbols, intentional signs, and photographs on the one hand and the
history of institutional and technological development on the other. It views
photography as a developing technology with a history of its own, and presents the
corporation as a communicator as well as a producer and employer.Illustrated with
nearly 60 photographs from the archives, the book identifies five "image markets"
that GE sought to organize and address. Company engineers, workers, and managers
received publications designed to appeal to their presumed interests. Some of these
grew into public journals with a scientific-educational mission; others were
restricted in circulation even within the company. At the same time, illustrated
mass-media advertising was created to reach potential consumers of GE products.
Advertising that presented an image of GE as a place where "progress was the most
important product." While GE was promoting this enlightened image, the company was
also using its resources to reach the voting public, hoping to gain their support
for private electrification in the national debate over municipal power.David E. Nye
is Associate Professor of American History at Odense University in
Denmark.