Practices of Looking
The reading Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture introduces the idea of visuality and says “the concept of visuality refers to the ways that vision is shaped through social context and interaction” (Cartwright and Sturken 22). Another reading, “The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic,” introduces the term the gaze and quotes Lacan, saying that “The gaze comes from the other who constitutes the self in that looking, but the gaze the self encounters ‘is, not a seen gaze, but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other’” (qtd. in Collins and Lutz 135-136). How are the concepts of visuality and of the gaze similar? How do these two concepts differ? (Aster)
Many of the readings this week discuss various aspects of invisibility and visibility in relation to photography. In some cases, limited visibility is interpreted as a display of power, as “the ‘civilized’ classes…have traditionally been depicted in Western art turning away from the camera and so symbolize themselves as less available” (Lutz and Collins 140). Conversely, visibility can also be used to the subject’s advantage, as Jason De Leon observed in his work. “This is how they want to present themselves to an imagined audience. They hope that you will look at them. Perhaps by seeing the faces of these so-called undocumented migrants and experiencing their direct gazes you will be forced to entire into…a “social contract” with them” (120). What are some other examples of the benefits and drawbacks of visibility? How are invisibility and visibility manipulated by photographers, subjects, and other parties (governments, viewers, academics, etc.) to fit specific situations and goals? (Lauren)
visuality is the social and cultural context of the photo. but also a condition of how vision is distributed along lines of power.
conditions of how something is made to be erased.
gaze
In Practices of Looking, Sturken and Cartwright provide Noor Behram's enlarged photograph of an orphaned Pakistani child taken from the vantage point of a military drone. Behram's photograph "points to the dehumanizing effect of a distanced point of view" in the context of innocent civilian deaths (Sturken and Cartwright 24). Although Behram's photograph is taken from very far away, what do we risk by photographing others, even if from close up? (Gabby)
Weizman argues that evidence are legal constructs and subjected to social and cultural understanding of legal systems and have less to do with historical accuracy than we might think of. Evidence are about what exist(ed) and what does not, and photography is often made to stand in for proving what is—if its in the image, it must have been. Conversely, what is not in the image must not have been. Weizman poses resolution as the determinate factor for the threshold of detectability, that is, the bar in which things are made visible and are thus made real. Yet here, similarly, Weizman reminds us that this threshold, ostensibly a technological one, is subject to politics and power. What are the ramification of understanding photographic evidence as political? Can we still think of anything resembling a photographic truth? Are photographs nevertheless useful as evidence, if so, how and of what?
McDougall argues that images are more than just representation. photographs and films mirror our bodies, replicating our sensorial experience. He insists that vision and sight are sensorial experiences before, even if not apart, from either the act of capturing images and attaching meaning to them. How is using a camera, especially in a time where we all have one, differs or mimics our experience of seeing the world? Does knowing the embodied experience of photographs help us understand something about the meaning of the image, or is it ‘in the way’?
evidence