Practices of looking
Practices of looking • Introduction to practices of looking • Discuss theories of “ representation ” • Discuss the myth of the photographic truth (see sample response paper) • Discuss facets of “ ideology ”
Practices of looking To look is an act of choice where we negotiate social relationships and meanings. Looking is a practice much like speaking, writing, or signing. To engage in the exchange of looks, to see and be seen, entails the play of power.
Theories of representation “ Representation refers to the use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us ” (p. 12) “ The world is not simply reflected back to us through representations that stand in for things by copying their appearance. We construct the meaning of things through the process of representation. ” (p. 12) Language and systems of representation do not reflect an already existing reality as much as they organize, construct, and mediate our understanding or reality, emotion, and imagination
Henri-Horace Roland De La Porte Still Life c.1765 Marion Peck, Still Life with Dralas, 2003
deconstructing systems of representation R. Magritte, The Treachery of Images 1928-29 M. Tansey, The Innocent Eye 1981
The myth of photographic truth
No matter what social role an image plays, “the creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing, and personalization.” (p. 16)
All camera-generated images. . . bear the cultural legacy of still photography, which historically has been regarded as a more objective practice then paining or drawing. The is combination of the subjective and the objective is a central tension in camera generated images.” (p. 17) Nikki S Lee - Hip Hop Project #36, 2002 Nikki S Lee The Hispanic Project (25) , 1998
Images and Ideology Ideology is “ the broad but indispensable, shared set of values and beliefs through which individuals live out their complex relations to a range of social networks ” (p. 23).
“ Ideology is manifested in widely shared social assumptions about the not only the way things are but also about the way things should be. Images and media representations are some of the forms through which we engage or enlist others to share certain views or not ” (p. 23).
“ Ideology is the means that by which certain values, such as individual freedom, progress, and the importance of home, are made to seem like natural, inevitable aspects of everyday life ” (p. 23)
“ Practices of looking are intimately tied to ideology. . . The most important aspect of ideologies in the modernist period was that they appeared to be natural or given, rather than part of a system of belief that a culture produces in order to function in a particular way ” (p. 23).
http://www.thedailynarrative.com/2014/10/19/media-coverage-of- pumpkin-festival-riots-vs-ferguson-video/.html
“what can be created of what we have been conditioned to be”? (Pinar et al., 1996)
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