The most provocative quote I have read – or perhaps it was just the one that galled me the most – was in Berger on page 100. He writes:
Nor is there space for the social function of subjectivity. All subjectivity is treated as private, and the only (false) form of it which is socially allowed is that of the individual consumer’s dream.
From this primary suppression of the social function of subjectivity, other suppressions flow: of meaningful democracy (replaced by opinion polls and market-research techniques), of social conscience (replaced by self-interest), of history (replaced by racist and other myths), of hope – the most subjective and social of all energies (replaced by the sacralisation of Progress as Comfort). (Berger 100)
This reading of mass culture is completely contrary to my sense of it. In addition to being pseudo-mystical (we've lost "hope" as a social energy?) and anachronistic (is racism really new?), it flattens out the experience of mass culture in order to observe it from above and in an inappropriately narrow and ideologically-restricted way.
Yet the materiality of Berger's book is important for a reading of this statement (Here's my History of Text Technology tie in!). Published in 1982 and reproduced here as a 1995 edition, the perspective of mass culture that he's working with is antique. The traditional Marxist understanding of cultural producers as puppeteers of the slack-jawed consumer is no longer apropos.
A true educational or scholarly tie-in would take a really long time to write out here, but suffice to say that I see the audience as participatory (especially since the emergence of Web 2.0, social networking, blogging, and online gaming). I've argued elsewhere (using Henry Jenkins, John Storey, Viktor Meyer-Schonberger and Thomas Newkirk) that the experience of mass culture isn't a faceless, flat and anonymous one, but is actually diverse and responsive in a way that both lends individuals power and allows them group identification. Whether I'm arguing these effectively I suppose remains to be seen...
I went back through all our readings thus far, but I had to stick with our most recent reading (Berger) for the most provocative quote. His book seems to me to be an intricate dance with the provocative. One that raised many questions for me is on page 133:
"If she were suddenly asked: What are you thinking about? she would invent a simple answer, because the question, when taken seriously, becomes unanswerable. Her reflections cannot be defined by any answer to a question beginning with What? And yet she was thinking, reflecting, remembering, recalling, and doing so in a consecutive manner."
The provocativeness in this quote comes, in part, from Berger’s statement that this woman “has been invented.” Berger and Mohr are putting together a narrative, a fictional narrative. I really enjoyed *reading* the visual text that follows the premise set up in the page the quotation I picked out came from. I read it as I would a story, as the authors seemed to want me to. I loved the reoccurring images, with their resizing and repositioning. The narrative did seem in the spirit of reflection/remembering/thinking. The ambiguity Berger claims innate to the photographic form allows a deeper answer to the What than a verbal telling could do.
But is this new way of telling, through photo narrative rather than photo documentary, have to be fictional? Maybe when he used the term “invented” Berger was just reminding us that the main character (the protagonist) of the narrative is constructed from a perspective on her, a her that is a real person. But even so, I am curious about the application of this new way of telling (or, as Larkin points out, this way of telling from ’82 that maybe isn’t considered new any more, but it’s new to me) as a tool of constructing a narrative of our own answers to the What. Is it possible? Would it be legitimate? Or must the photo narrative remain an art form?
Maybe I’m reading this all wrong. Maybe the photo narrative was a direct application of thoughts and memories that a particular woman provided to the authors. The ambiguity presented is what makes me call the above quotation provocative. Even to pull a bit of the quote out of the direct context, the idea that answering the question “What are you thinking about” is unanswerable when taken seriously, is provocative. It’s disconcerting to know that though I’ve been trying to write a cohesive answer to a What right now (What about the above quote do I find provocative), I am giving a simplified (or maybe confused) answer to what I’m thinking about. How might I respond differently to this question in a photographic narrative? Could it be legitimate?
The most provocative/interesting quote that I have come across so far in VR is one from Berger on page 92:
"In the relation between a photograph and words, the photograph begs for an interpretation, and the words usually supply it. The photograph, irrefutable as evidence but weak in meaning, is given meaning by the words. And the words, which by themselves remain at the level of generalisation, are given specific authenticity by the irrefutability of the photograph. Together the two then become very powerful; an open question appears to have been fully answered."
This paragraph to me seems to contain a number of premises on which Berger (and, indirectly, we) are basing certain conclusions about photography in particular and VR in general. The first is the "irrefutability" of the photograph. We touched on this in the blogs last week in regard to the two images (Katrina and FSA). As Berger would explain, both the images provide an account of light and time as they actually occurred when the photographs were taken. However, we all had to provide our own contexts, our own words, for the stories behind both of the images. Ultimately, those contexts and words themselves were given their own levels of irrefutability, because who could really say what is right or wrong? The "open question" of the photos' meanings, then, becomes answered.
I thought the advertisement on page 91 demonstrates well what the combination of images and words can be used to accomplish.
The most provocative quote for me is more so an anecdote than a theoretical claim. I find it provocative nonetheless because of the inherent social and political implications and the way it illustrates how we use photographs to construct or reaffirm a version of reality rather than capture a moment of reality. The quote (i.e., the anecdote) is as follows:
“‘We could scarcely use a picture. You chose to show Tito as a head of state looking human, even friendly. Yet Tito is a communist, and the newspaper editors here, who buy our pictures, have a very clear idea of what a communist head of state looks like. They must have scowling and threatening faces. You should have thought of that, you know.’
Ten years later, Tito began to be labeled ‘socialist’ rather than ‘communist’ in the Western press, and even to be lauded as the legendary figure who dares to oppose Moscow. My photographs of him then became usable.”
This quote positions, rather relegates, photography to a medium that supports a preconceived notion instead of one that captures reality from which we can construct a notion. In other words, the “reality” is already constructed communally; in the case of this photograph, the “reality” is that Tito should perpetually exhibit the attributes associated with a “communist head of state”, attributes such as “‘scowling and threatening faces.’” Because the picture portrays Tito exhibiting characteristics considered the antithesis of “communist”, the photo becomes unusable: the reality it captures contrasts the constructed and communally accepted reality and thus threatens what we have agreed is “real”.
This example as a whole makes me think of the ways we (ab)use photographs to strengthen an agenda (the major culprit, as the quote implies, is the media). Searching for truth (or Truth) is sacrificed in favor of bolstering a preconception. Think, for example, about when we integrate visuals into our written work (and my use of the word “integrate” already grants the visual a secondary status). The process of how one uses visuals, of course, varies, but I imagine a good percentage looks for photos after the fact; that is, rather than begin the composing process with a visual that one “reads” and that subsequently inspires the written, one writes first and then searches for a photo that aligns with what we consider, what we envision, is appropriate. It’s akin to the faulty research procedure wherein one reads for quotes to support an already formulated argument rather than read other texts for the purpose of formulating an argument.
Lastly, this example made me think of the 2002 film Journeys with George, which documents George W. Bush’s campaign trail (mostly behind the scenes footage) during the 2000 election. Considering how polemic a figure W is in our culture, one would assume this movie would have more cultural salience and resonance; instead, it remains surprisingly unpopular. The reason, from what I can deduce, is that the documentary portrays W in a way that doesn’t parallel the already formulated, circulated, and accepted versions of W. In the documentary, George Jr. is socially awkward but also endearing in that “cool uncle” sort of way. In short, the way we “read” Bush in this documentary doesn’t strengthen an agenda, doesn’t support a representation of Bush, for either the right or the left. Consequently, neither side has felt the need to draw attention to documentary: its portrayal of Bush threatens what both parties consider “real”.
For me, the most profound quote came in the last section of Another Way of Telling, "Stories:"
"One can lie on the ground and look up at the almost infinite number of stars in the night sky, but in order to tell stories about those stars they need to be seen as constellations, the invisible lines which can connect them need to be assumed. No story is like a wheeled vehicle whose contact with the road is continuous. Stories walk, like animals or men. And their steps are not only between narrated events but between each sentence, sometimes each word. Every step is a stride over something not said" (284-85).
I find this quote provocative because of the connection it makes between photographs and storytelling. While a photograph can exist alone and has a message to offer on its own, its power, to me, comes when it starts to make connections to other photographs or other texts. There are precursors and references with photographs to other events and this is how images begin to tell powerful stories. Berger uses this to explain the photograph sequences within his book. They are not chronological and sometimes are not even related events, but they begin to make sense to readers (and began to make sense to me) when we attempt to make meaning between images, to narrate bridges getting us from one photograph to the next.
This reminds me of Hill and Helmers introduction. Intertextuality is inherent in visual rhetoric. The references a photograph makes to other photographs or other verbal texts helps compose its meaning and its argument. If readers are unable to understand (or notice) the precursors or references then the photograph loses some of its powerful message. For me, I thought of our last blog where I felt unable to talk about the photographs because I didn't recognize them, because I didn't have a context for them. Berger has made me begin to think that maybe photographs don't need to have contexts. Perhaps part of the exercise of reading a visual is through the construction a viewer does with other references. That almost seems more important than the circumstances surrounding the production of the photograph.
After reading the posts so far, I put aside the quote that I was going to use from Berger and thought I’d try to give some of the other readings a little more air time. So, here goes. Hopefully, I will be able to talk back/build on some of the posts above... In their introduction, Helmer’s and Hill write: Historically, images have played an important role in developing consciousness and the relationship of the self to its surroundings. We learn who we are as private individuals and public citizens by seeing ourselves reflected in images, and we learn who we can become by transporting ourselves into images. While we’ve discussed context, or lack there of, this quote gestures to a perpetual sense of becoming, one not just of the viewer gazing (or glancing) at an image, but of the context that is in a state of flux through repeated and varied acts of viewing. Here, an image’s intertextuality extends both around and through the viewer. How, I ask, does this dual sense of an individual’s experience of an image engage with Larkin’s comment about the subjective experience of the individual and Rory’s comment about the use of images to construct or affirm a version of reality rather than capture a moment . . . ? The quote above gestures to what may be at the crux of these two different yet intersecting perspectives/critiques of images. If images are a critical way in which our public and private selves are developed, they gain/take on meaning, as Helmers and Hill remind us, “through repeated imagining and storytelling.” Somewhere in this imagining and storytelling is the individual and the subjective. Part of the subjective experience are those moments when we see ourselves, develop our public and private selves. This individuality is tempered by the (re)imaginings and storytelling that, as they gain momentum, also gain stability. Thus, as these images become meaningful to the public, so does this public become meaningful through and to an image. Here, I think about our understandings of ourselves and our students in the writing classroom. Our identities and the identities through which we know our students conveyed through the visual. How do we see ourselves and our students within the writing classroom? What is the image of the classroom that is created within academic texts? How do we fit into this communal (re)imagining? The stability of this (re)imagining, however, does not eliminate the role of subjective experience as the “imagined” hermit in the garret producing genius is (re)imagined as the networked composer of multimodal and collaborative texts. As we think about what images have taught us about ourselves as writing teachers and how we engage these images as we envision new roles for both ourselves and our students in the classroom, I ask where does the private experience of subjectivity that Larkin discusses and Rory’s discussion of how photographs are used to reaffirm a version of reality rather than to capture a moment of reality combine and play out in our “work”? How are we active agents in communal reimaginings through the images that we create, through the quatations that we construct within our work on pedagogy and classroom practice?
The quote I chose as “most provocative” is from Berger on page 280:
“Memory itself is not made up of flashbacks, each one forever moving inexorably forward. Memory is a field where different times coexist. The field is continuous in terms of the subjectivity which creates and extends it, but temporarily it is discontinuous . . . both the photograph and the remembered depend upon and equally oppose the passing of time. Both preserve moments, and propose their own form of simultaneity, in which all their images can coexist. Both stimulate, and are stimulated by, the inter-connectedness of events”
I think there are three things about this quote that I find most provocative and interesting: First is Berger’s emphasis on the inter-connectedness of events; second is his conception of time; third is this state of coexistence of the images of photography and memory.
In terms of the inter-connectedness of events, I think this is interesting because it underlines how events that occur in space/time are not necessarily successive/chronological but occur much more like a network or a cluster of connections, and this, I think, is a provocative challenge to how we conceive of narrative and the construction of narrative. This suggests to me two things: first, that (again) the construction of events (history and thus cultural/collective memory) is entirely a rhetorical practice and, second, that there is the potential for individual/subjective agency in the process, since we are embedded in this network of events and images of those events. On the other hand, like Rory suggests in his comment, that agency is limited for the very same reason. I think Finnegan’s conclusions about why Stryker would endorse such problematic representations of the poor misses this fact: that Stryker was embedded in events, in the circulation of images, and that he probably/possibly saw the poor in a way that reflected the images in LOOK. This leads to an interesting question: how can it be that this network of images seems to have its own autonomy?
Second is Berger’s view of time as simultaneous. I like his conception of memory as a “field where different times coexist” since it, again, suggests a challenge to how we think of how images operate in our minds and it represents the creative possibility of assemblage. I think this is the aspect of the visual rhetoric that we teach in our classes that I find most exciting: how narrative/knowledge might be put together via the production/construction of images. Of course, I do think that the fact that he conceives of memory spatially is interesting. The cultural geographer Doreen Massey, in her wrestlings with the idea of “space”, argues that such spatial metaphors counter-productively splice time into a “discrete simultaneity” and end up flattening the "life" (read: concrete, material realities) out of time. In this case, Berger’s memory involves (despite his intentions) a collective of different but discrete times. Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but my point is that I think Berger is on the right track, but I wonder if we can complicate his point about time by thinking about how time AND space are inextricable and how that might tie in with how we construct knowledge via images.
Last, what I also like about Berger’s quote is its suggestion of the posthuman: that there is a blending between the material of the photograph and photographic apparatus and the human mind. In this way, I wonder about the overlap between our thinking of Visual Rhetoric as a systematic mode of inquiry and the ideas of posthumanism. Brooke claims that “posthuman rhetoric, as a return to embodied information, involves a revaluing of partiality”—isn’t this what Berger is suggesting to us via his proposed “photographic narrative”?
It seems like the class has Berger pretty well covered, so I decided to go back to a quote from Foss which provoked me (306): “Key to a rhetorical perspective on visual artifacts is its focus on a rhetorical response to an artifact rather than an aesthetic one. An aesthetic response consists of a viewer’s direct perceptual encounter with the sensory aspects of the artifact. Experience of a work at an aesthetic level might mean enjoying its color, sensing its form, or valuing its texture. There is no purpose governing the experience other than simply having the experience. In a rhetorical response, in contrast, meaning is attributed to the artifact. Colors, lines, textures, and rhythms in an artifact provide a basis for the viewer to infer the existence of images, emotions, and ideas. Understanding these rhetorical responses to visual artifacts is the purpose of visual rhetoric as a perspective.” I have so many issues with this quote it’s hard to know where to begin. As an art educator, I am intrigued by the possibilities the visual rhetoric perspective holds for reframing my field of practice. Since the beginning of class, some nagging questions at the back of my head have been: To what extent is art rhetorical? How applicable is the visual rhetoric framework to understanding and creating artwork? Are there ways that visual rhetoric is inapplicable to art? Foss’ quote gets to the heart of some of my questions with her assertion of a separation of the aesthetic response from the rhetorical response. While I’m willing to believe that there is a “magic” about art that may transcend or at least differ from rhetoric (although I would be hard pressed to say what that magic is!) I do not agree with Foss’s characterization of aesthetic response as purely sensory. How is it possible to respond simply to color or other sensory information without trying to organize it into some kind of meaningful experience? Though some aesthetic philosophers – particularly Kant – have described art as purposively purposeless, (i.e., that art expresses some idea and doesn’t serve a physical function) I don’t believe purposelessness equals meaninglessness. A more updated, but still 80 years old, conceptualization of aesthetic experience comes from Dewey, and is remarkably like Foss’s description of a rhetorical response to artwork, in which the viewer seeks meaning in the visual elements of the artwork. Finally, I think this quote points to the importance of context and intertextuality in interpreting artwork. Even in the case of abstract painting, colors, shapes, textures, brushstrokes don’t only refer to themselves – they gain meaning by the connections viewers make to other contexts, artworks, experiences, ideas, cultural products.
I’m pulling my quote from Helmers and Hill’s introduction:
“One of the important concepts for any discussion of the role of the viewer in images is the relationship between viewing and time. Images work on us synchronically and diachronically. Synchronically, we view that image that represents the present. Diachronic viewings are slightly more complicated, for we view an image that represents the past and was created in the past, but we also view contemporaneous images with a knowledge of their precursors and their previous meanings” (12-13).
The role of the viewer is a complicated position, and I’m intrigued by how significant the role of the viewer is. The viewer’s way of seeing influences the meaning of visual rhetoric substantially. Is it not the most influential factor? Perhaps I’m putting too much emphasis on the viewer.
There is a particular photo that appears in _The New York Times’_ “Documenting the Decade” that represents Helmers and Hill’s notion for me (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/2009-decade.html#/2000_2_31587). Below is the “recollection” that the contributor submitted along with the photo:
“Although not a very high quality photo, this was taken in February 2000, on my daughter’s 10th birthday at the Windows On The World restaurant at the World Trade Center. The kids were pretending to be in ‘Men in Black’ in the elevators on the way up.”
A diachronic viewing of this image is significantly different than a synchronic, obviously. From February 2000 until September 10, 2001, this image represents something different for the viewer than when viewed on or after 9/11. My question is, what is the delineation between the synchronic and diachronic time frame? And is it different for different viewers?
On page 128 Berger says, "The expressive photograph--whose expressiveness can contain its ambiguity of meaning and "give reason" to it-- is a long quotation from appearances: the length here to be measured not by time but by a greater extension of meaning. . . the very same discontinuity allows us to read across them and to find a synchronic coherance which, instead of narrating instigates ideas."
Hmmm. Considering all that Berger says about the photograph as a "quotation" from appearances, it seems to me that an image would have been a valid choice in this exercise. I think it's interesting that none of us (myself included) chose an image from Berger as qualifying as "provocative." hmmm.
My favorite quotes comes from Foss (2004): “The world produced by visual rhetoric is not always-or even often-clear, well organized, or rational, but is instead, a world made up of human experiences that are messy, emotional, fragmented, silly, serious, and disorganized” (310). For me this quote talks about the wide range of human experience. Not only does this quote help to define visual rhetoric in the means of elements and relationships between artist and audience, but also the idea of assessment. Humans naturally experience and go through all of these feelings; therefore, we are able to connect at a higher level through an image that someone else created. We are able to feel what the author has intended for us to feel. Louis Rosenblatt’s reader’s response theory is based on taking a reading and having a two way conversation between writer and audience. As educated individuals we are able to look at an image and create that same dialogue. We all have different impressions, reactions, or readings based on our personal experiences. This makes visual rhetoric a personalized media form; A deep reading of our souls and where we stand in our lives. How we assess an image will be completely different if we do not have a base for interpreting visuals; yet, that is why the conversations based on visual rhetoric continue. Berger constantly reinforces the idea of how visual rhetoric is completely ambiguous, especially if there is no text to give guidance to the readers thought process. Visual rhetoric is a new type of reading and is amazing when we can look at an image from different perspectives to tell a story that has been captured in the midst of the event.
While reading I have been struggling with the tension we discussed in class between consumption and production. While Berger’s book is amazing for exploring what critical consumption may include, I found myself drawn to the portions when he discusses the production of images.
I am particularly in love with the notion that “a professional photographer tries, when taking a photo, to choose an instant which will persuade the public viewer to lend it an appropriate past and future.”
I started to become worried that with all his talk of image as ambiguity that he was going to go so far in the opposite direction of the intentional fallacy that he would end with “well, the authors has no control and the reader and context have all the control.” I appreciated his nod to a thoughtful compromise of sorts. No, authors may not be able to exactly control the way their images are taken in; however, that does not make it all relativistic: there are more and less effective ways to go about creating an image. You can indeed include things that will work to persuade your audience to see the photo in a different way.
However, as soon as I was “comfortable” with this, it was instantly complicated. Darn you academia! For my decade image I looked at the “Bliss” background image on the 2001 version of Windows XP (the blue sky and green field). This image has come to mean “computers” or “Microsoft”—not “Califronia” or “Napa Valley” which is what it literally shows. The author, Charles O]Rear, took this photo as part of a National Geographer photo shoot of vineyards near Napa Valley. In no way did he construct this image so the audience would create “an appropriate past and future” pertaining to computers. O’Rear had almost no control over the intake of this image once Microsoft purchased it. Here it was not the author or the image that worked to create meaning; it was a third party corporation. It was Hill and Helmers notion of dissemination and reception that was “controlling” here.
Just as I start to grasp an idea of how images work another stakeholder enters the scene and muddles it up...
I agree, Josh. Though, I did consider using an image--particularly the one of the young girl chasing the train.
The one I did choose, I found provocative because as Berger seems to struggle with the very thing that he identifies as foremost with him--the expressiveness of the photograph. He states that the "length here to be measured not by time but by a greater extension of meaning. . . the very same discontinuity allows us to read across them and to find a synchronic coherance which, instead of narrating instigates ideas." This suggests the ephemeral nature of a photograph, while limited by time, at same time it is freed by time to become something to which meaning is attached or from which it is made according to when it is being accessed.
This reminds me also of some Native African beliefs about capturing one's spirit in photograph or replications of the external being. This act binds up the one photographed leaving him or her to be this image as captured not the living spirit that carries on beyond death.
"Here it was not the author or the image that worked to create meaning; it was a third party corporation. It was Hill and Helmers notion of dissemination and reception that was “controlling” here."
Interesting post, Natalie.
The notion of controlling—factors, companies, motives—means that photos have no agency. What of the photographer? Certainly photography is an act of exigency but if the meaning that we take can be manipulated according to environment and what is unknown about context, though its existence may be ephemeral but its meaning is not.
The part of our readings to date that strikes me the most was by Berger on pages 94-5.
“It may clarify what we mean by a trace if we ask how a drawing differs from a photograph. A drawing is a translation. That is to say each mark on the paper is consciously related not to the real or imaged “model”, but also to every mark and space already set out on the paper...In a drawing an apple is made round and spherical; in a photograph, the roundness and the light and the shade of the apple are received as a given.
Since I have an AA in Fine Art and hope to complete my BFA someday, I was drawn to Berger's claim for a couple of reasons. First, I find myself wondering how people sitting for a painted portrait differs from people sitting for a photographed portrait. In both cases, the goal is to produce a realistic image of the people. In fact, I have seen pencil drawings that can be and are mistaken for B&W photographs. At least in this case, I'd argue that a composed picture is more similar to than different from a drawing because the photographer, like the artist, attempts to control lighting, depth of field, and angle of the lens based on his or her experience. That is, the figuration is impregnated by experience and consciousness. His discussion of Marcel appearing to have his “bust” taken echos my point (36). When a portrait is painted or photographed, I'd argue that both the painter/photographer and the subject are attempting to influence the final product, the message that will remain as their legacy. I think I'm venturing into the realm of authorial intent here...
At the same time, I like the idea of translating/drawing and quoting/photographing. As a novice artist, I want any perceptual distortions present in the drawing to be there because I want them there not because I can't draw it image “correctly.” In some ways, I think this idea is similar to translating a text. If a phrase is ambiguous, the translator needs to make a judgment call and perhaps even offer an alternative translation in a foot or endnote, not unlike an artist making several studies before launching into the final painting or drawing. A photograph captures to moment and like a quotation can be taken out of context and misinterpreted.
The most provocative quote I have read – or perhaps it was just the one that galled me the most – was in Berger on page 100. He writes:
ReplyDeleteNor is there space for the social function of subjectivity. All subjectivity is treated as private, and the only (false) form of it which is socially allowed is that of the individual consumer’s dream.
From this primary suppression of the social function of subjectivity, other suppressions flow: of meaningful democracy (replaced by opinion polls and market-research techniques), of social conscience (replaced by self-interest), of history (replaced by racist and other myths), of hope – the most subjective and social of all energies (replaced by the sacralisation of Progress as Comfort). (Berger 100)
This reading of mass culture is completely contrary to my sense of it. In addition to being pseudo-mystical (we've lost "hope" as a social energy?) and anachronistic (is racism really new?), it flattens out the experience of mass culture in order to observe it from above and in an inappropriately narrow and ideologically-restricted way.
Yet the materiality of Berger's book is important for a reading of this statement (Here's my History of Text Technology tie in!). Published in 1982 and reproduced here as a 1995 edition, the perspective of mass culture that he's working with is antique. The traditional Marxist understanding of cultural producers as puppeteers of the slack-jawed consumer is no longer apropos.
A true educational or scholarly tie-in would take a really long time to write out here, but suffice to say that I see the audience as participatory (especially since the emergence of Web 2.0, social networking, blogging, and online gaming). I've argued elsewhere (using Henry Jenkins, John Storey, Viktor Meyer-Schonberger and Thomas Newkirk) that the experience of mass culture isn't a faceless, flat and anonymous one, but is actually diverse and responsive in a way that both lends individuals power and allows them group identification. Whether I'm arguing these effectively I suppose remains to be seen...
I went back through all our readings thus far, but I had to stick with our most recent reading (Berger) for the most provocative quote. His book seems to me to be an intricate dance with the provocative. One that raised many questions for me is on page 133:
ReplyDelete"If she were suddenly asked: What are you thinking about? she would invent a simple answer, because the question, when taken seriously, becomes unanswerable. Her reflections cannot be defined by any answer to a question beginning with What? And yet she was thinking, reflecting, remembering, recalling, and doing so in a consecutive manner."
The provocativeness in this quote comes, in part, from Berger’s statement that this woman “has been invented.” Berger and Mohr are putting together a narrative, a fictional narrative. I really enjoyed *reading* the visual text that follows the premise set up in the page the quotation I picked out came from. I read it as I would a story, as the authors seemed to want me to. I loved the reoccurring images, with their resizing and repositioning. The narrative did seem in the spirit of reflection/remembering/thinking. The ambiguity Berger claims innate to the photographic form allows a deeper answer to the What than a verbal telling could do.
But is this new way of telling, through photo narrative rather than photo documentary, have to be fictional? Maybe when he used the term “invented” Berger was just reminding us that the main character (the protagonist) of the narrative is constructed from a perspective on her, a her that is a real person. But even so, I am curious about the application of this new way of telling (or, as Larkin points out, this way of telling from ’82 that maybe isn’t considered new any more, but it’s new to me) as a tool of constructing a narrative of our own answers to the What. Is it possible? Would it be legitimate? Or must the photo narrative remain an art form?
Maybe I’m reading this all wrong. Maybe the photo narrative was a direct application of thoughts and memories that a particular woman provided to the authors. The ambiguity presented is what makes me call the above quotation provocative. Even to pull a bit of the quote out of the direct context, the idea that answering the question “What are you thinking about” is unanswerable when taken seriously, is provocative. It’s disconcerting to know that though I’ve been trying to write a cohesive answer to a What right now (What about the above quote do I find provocative), I am giving a simplified (or maybe confused) answer to what I’m thinking about. How might I respond differently to this question in a photographic narrative? Could it be legitimate?
The most provocative/interesting quote that I have come across so far in VR is one from Berger on page 92:
ReplyDelete"In the relation between a photograph and words, the photograph begs for an interpretation, and the words usually supply it. The photograph, irrefutable as evidence but weak in meaning, is given meaning by the words. And the words, which by themselves remain at the level of generalisation, are given specific authenticity by the irrefutability of the photograph. Together the two then become very powerful; an open question appears to have been fully answered."
This paragraph to me seems to contain a number of premises on which Berger (and, indirectly, we) are basing certain conclusions about photography in particular and VR in general. The first is the "irrefutability" of the photograph. We touched on this in the blogs last week in regard to the two images (Katrina and FSA). As Berger would explain, both the images provide an account of light and time as they actually occurred when the photographs were taken. However, we all had to provide our own contexts, our own words, for the stories behind both of the images. Ultimately, those contexts and words themselves were given their own levels of irrefutability, because who could really say what is right or wrong? The "open question" of the photos' meanings, then, becomes answered.
I thought the advertisement on page 91 demonstrates well what the combination of images and words can be used to accomplish.
The most provocative quote for me is more so an anecdote than a theoretical claim. I find it provocative nonetheless because of the inherent social and political implications and the way it illustrates how we use photographs to construct or reaffirm a version of reality rather than capture a moment of reality. The quote (i.e., the anecdote) is as follows:
ReplyDelete“‘We could scarcely use a picture. You chose to show Tito as a head of state looking human, even friendly. Yet Tito is a communist, and the newspaper editors here, who buy our pictures, have a very clear idea of what a communist head of state looks like. They must have scowling and threatening faces. You should have thought of that, you know.’
Ten years later, Tito began to be labeled ‘socialist’ rather than ‘communist’ in the Western press, and even to be lauded as the legendary figure who dares to oppose Moscow. My photographs of him then became usable.”
This quote positions, rather relegates, photography to a medium that supports a preconceived notion instead of one that captures reality from which we can construct a notion. In other words, the “reality” is already constructed communally; in the case of this photograph, the “reality” is that Tito should perpetually exhibit the attributes associated with a “communist head of state”, attributes such as “‘scowling and threatening faces.’” Because the picture portrays Tito exhibiting characteristics considered the antithesis of “communist”, the photo becomes unusable: the reality it captures contrasts the constructed and communally accepted reality and thus threatens what we have agreed is “real”.
This example as a whole makes me think of the ways we (ab)use photographs to strengthen an agenda (the major culprit, as the quote implies, is the media). Searching for truth (or Truth) is sacrificed in favor of bolstering a preconception. Think, for example, about when we integrate visuals into our written work (and my use of the word “integrate” already grants the visual a secondary status). The process of how one uses visuals, of course, varies, but I imagine a good percentage looks for photos after the fact; that is, rather than begin the composing process with a visual that one “reads” and that subsequently inspires the written, one writes first and then searches for a photo that aligns with what we consider, what we envision, is appropriate. It’s akin to the faulty research procedure wherein one reads for quotes to support an already formulated argument rather than read other texts for the purpose of formulating an argument.
Lastly, this example made me think of the 2002 film Journeys with George, which documents George W. Bush’s campaign trail (mostly behind the scenes footage) during the 2000 election. Considering how polemic a figure W is in our culture, one would assume this movie would have more cultural salience and resonance; instead, it remains surprisingly unpopular. The reason, from what I can deduce, is that the documentary portrays W in a way that doesn’t parallel the already formulated, circulated, and accepted versions of W. In the documentary, George Jr. is socially awkward but also endearing in that “cool uncle” sort of way. In short, the way we “read” Bush in this documentary doesn’t strengthen an agenda, doesn’t support a representation of Bush, for either the right or the left. Consequently, neither side has felt the need to draw attention to documentary: its portrayal of Bush threatens what both parties consider “real”.
For me, the most profound quote came in the last section of Another Way of Telling, "Stories:"
ReplyDelete"One can lie on the ground and look up at the almost infinite number of stars in the night sky, but in order to tell stories about those stars they need to be seen as constellations, the invisible lines which can connect them need to be assumed. No story is like a wheeled vehicle whose contact with the road is continuous. Stories walk, like animals or men. And their steps are not only between narrated events but between each sentence, sometimes each word. Every step is a stride over something not said" (284-85).
I find this quote provocative because of the connection it makes between photographs and storytelling. While a photograph can exist alone and has a message to offer on its own, its power, to me, comes when it starts to make connections to other photographs or other texts. There are precursors and references with photographs to other events and this is how images begin to tell powerful stories. Berger uses this to explain the photograph sequences within his book. They are not chronological and sometimes are not even related events, but they begin to make sense to readers (and began to make sense to me) when we attempt to make meaning between images, to narrate bridges getting us from one photograph to the next.
This reminds me of Hill and Helmers introduction. Intertextuality is inherent in visual rhetoric. The references a photograph makes to other photographs or other verbal texts helps compose its meaning and its argument. If readers are unable to understand (or notice) the precursors or references then the photograph loses some of its powerful message. For me, I thought of our last blog where I felt unable to talk about the photographs because I didn't recognize them, because I didn't have a context for them. Berger has made me begin to think that maybe photographs don't need to have contexts. Perhaps part of the exercise of reading a visual is through the construction a viewer does with other references. That almost seems more important than the circumstances surrounding the production of the photograph.
After reading the posts so far, I put aside the quote that I was going to use from Berger and thought I’d try to give some of the other readings a little more air time. So, here goes. Hopefully, I will be able to talk back/build on some of the posts above...
ReplyDeleteIn their introduction, Helmer’s and Hill write:
Historically, images have played an important role in developing consciousness and the relationship of the self to its surroundings. We learn who we are as private individuals and public citizens by seeing ourselves reflected in images, and we learn who we can become by transporting ourselves into images.
While we’ve discussed context, or lack there of, this quote gestures to a perpetual sense of becoming, one not just of the viewer gazing (or glancing) at an image, but of the context that is in a state of flux through repeated and varied acts of viewing. Here, an image’s intertextuality extends both around and through the viewer.
How, I ask, does this dual sense of an individual’s experience of an image engage with Larkin’s comment about the subjective experience of the individual and Rory’s comment about the use of images to construct or affirm a version of reality rather than capture a moment . . . ?
The quote above gestures to what may be at the crux of these two different yet intersecting perspectives/critiques of images. If images are a critical way in which our public and private selves are developed, they gain/take on meaning, as Helmers and Hill remind us, “through repeated imagining and storytelling.” Somewhere in this imagining and storytelling is the individual and the subjective. Part of the subjective experience are those moments when we see ourselves, develop our public and private selves. This individuality is tempered by the (re)imaginings and storytelling that, as they gain momentum, also gain stability. Thus, as these images become meaningful to the public, so does this public become meaningful through and to an image.
Here, I think about our understandings of ourselves and our students in the writing classroom. Our identities and the identities through which we know our students conveyed through the visual. How do we see ourselves and our students within the writing classroom? What is the image of the classroom that is created within academic texts? How do we fit into this communal (re)imagining? The stability of this (re)imagining, however, does not eliminate the role of subjective experience as the “imagined” hermit in the garret producing genius is (re)imagined as the networked composer of multimodal and collaborative texts.
As we think about what images have taught us about ourselves as writing teachers and how we engage these images as we envision new roles for both ourselves and our students in the classroom, I ask where does the private experience of subjectivity that Larkin discusses and Rory’s discussion of how photographs are used to reaffirm a version of reality rather than to capture a moment of reality combine and play out in our “work”? How are we active agents in communal reimaginings through the images that we create, through the quatations that we construct within our work on pedagogy and classroom practice?
The quote I chose as “most provocative” is from Berger on page 280:
ReplyDelete“Memory itself is not made up of flashbacks, each one forever moving inexorably forward. Memory is a field where different times coexist. The field is continuous in terms of the subjectivity which creates and extends it, but temporarily it is discontinuous . . . both the photograph and the remembered depend upon and equally oppose the passing of time. Both preserve moments, and propose their own form of simultaneity, in which all their images can coexist. Both stimulate, and are stimulated by, the inter-connectedness of events”
I think there are three things about this quote that I find most provocative and interesting:
First is Berger’s emphasis on the inter-connectedness of events; second is his conception of time; third is this state of coexistence of the images of photography and memory.
In terms of the inter-connectedness of events, I think this is interesting because it underlines how events that occur in space/time are not necessarily successive/chronological but occur much more like a network or a cluster of connections, and this, I think, is a provocative challenge to how we conceive of narrative and the construction of narrative. This suggests to me two things: first, that (again) the construction of events (history and thus cultural/collective memory) is entirely a rhetorical practice and, second, that there is the potential for individual/subjective agency in the process, since we are embedded in this network of events and images of those events. On the other hand, like Rory suggests in his comment, that agency is limited for the very same reason. I think Finnegan’s conclusions about why Stryker would endorse such problematic representations of the poor misses this fact: that Stryker was embedded in events, in the circulation of images, and that he probably/possibly saw the poor in a way that reflected the images in LOOK. This leads to an interesting question: how can it be that this network of images seems to have its own autonomy?
Second is Berger’s view of time as simultaneous. I like his conception of memory as a “field where different times coexist” since it, again, suggests a challenge to how we think of how images operate in our minds and it represents the creative possibility of assemblage. I think this is the aspect of the visual rhetoric that we teach in our classes that I find most exciting: how narrative/knowledge might be put together via the production/construction of images. Of course, I do think that the fact that he conceives of memory spatially is interesting. The cultural geographer Doreen Massey, in her wrestlings with the idea of “space”, argues that such spatial metaphors counter-productively splice time into a “discrete simultaneity” and end up flattening the "life" (read: concrete, material realities) out of time. In this case, Berger’s memory involves (despite his intentions) a collective of different but discrete times. Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but my point is that I think Berger is on the right track, but I wonder if we can complicate his point about time by thinking about how time AND space are inextricable and how that might tie in with how we construct knowledge via images.
Last, what I also like about Berger’s quote is its suggestion of the posthuman: that there is a blending between the material of the photograph and photographic apparatus and the human mind. In this way, I wonder about the overlap between our thinking of Visual Rhetoric as a systematic mode of inquiry and the ideas of posthumanism. Brooke claims that “posthuman rhetoric, as a return to embodied information, involves a revaluing of partiality”—isn’t this what Berger is suggesting to us via his proposed “photographic narrative”?
Fun!
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ReplyDeleteIt seems like the class has Berger pretty well covered, so I decided to go back to a quote from Foss which provoked me (306):
ReplyDelete“Key to a rhetorical perspective on visual artifacts is its focus on a rhetorical response to an artifact rather than an aesthetic one. An aesthetic response consists of a viewer’s direct perceptual encounter with the sensory aspects of the artifact. Experience of a work at an aesthetic level might mean enjoying its color, sensing its form, or valuing its texture. There is no purpose governing the experience other than simply having the experience. In a rhetorical response, in contrast, meaning is attributed to the artifact. Colors, lines, textures, and rhythms in an artifact provide a basis for the viewer to infer the existence of images, emotions, and ideas. Understanding these rhetorical responses to visual artifacts is the purpose of visual rhetoric as a perspective.”
I have so many issues with this quote it’s hard to know where to begin. As an art educator, I am intrigued by the possibilities the visual rhetoric perspective holds for reframing my field of practice. Since the beginning of class, some nagging questions at the back of my head have been: To what extent is art rhetorical? How applicable is the visual rhetoric framework to understanding and creating artwork? Are there ways that visual rhetoric is inapplicable to art? Foss’ quote gets to the heart of some of my questions with her assertion of a separation of the aesthetic response from the rhetorical response. While I’m willing to believe that there is a “magic” about art that may transcend or at least differ from rhetoric (although I would be hard pressed to say what that magic is!) I do not agree with Foss’s characterization of aesthetic response as purely sensory. How is it possible to respond simply to color or other sensory information without trying to organize it into some kind of meaningful experience? Though some aesthetic philosophers – particularly Kant – have described art as purposively purposeless, (i.e., that art expresses some idea and doesn’t serve a physical function) I don’t believe purposelessness equals meaninglessness. A more updated, but still 80 years old, conceptualization of aesthetic experience comes from Dewey, and is remarkably like Foss’s description of a rhetorical response to artwork, in which the viewer seeks meaning in the visual elements of the artwork.
Finally, I think this quote points to the importance of context and intertextuality in interpreting artwork. Even in the case of abstract painting, colors, shapes, textures, brushstrokes don’t only refer to themselves – they gain meaning by the connections viewers make to other contexts, artworks, experiences, ideas, cultural products.
I’m pulling my quote from Helmers and Hill’s introduction:
ReplyDelete“One of the important concepts for any discussion of the role of the viewer in images is the relationship between viewing and time. Images work on us synchronically and diachronically. Synchronically, we view that image that represents the present. Diachronic viewings are slightly more complicated, for we view an image that represents the past and was created in the past, but we also view contemporaneous images with a knowledge of their precursors and their previous meanings” (12-13).
The role of the viewer is a complicated position, and I’m intrigued by how significant the role of the viewer is. The viewer’s way of seeing influences the meaning of visual rhetoric substantially. Is it not the most influential factor? Perhaps I’m putting too much emphasis on the viewer.
There is a particular photo that appears in _The New York Times’_ “Documenting the Decade” that represents Helmers and Hill’s notion for me (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/2009-decade.html#/2000_2_31587). Below is the “recollection” that the contributor submitted along with the photo:
“Although not a very high quality photo, this was taken in February 2000, on my daughter’s 10th birthday at the Windows On The World restaurant at the World Trade Center. The kids were pretending to be in ‘Men in Black’ in the elevators on the way up.”
A diachronic viewing of this image is significantly different than a synchronic, obviously. From February 2000 until September 10, 2001, this image represents something different for the viewer than when viewed on or after 9/11. My question is, what is the delineation between the synchronic and diachronic time frame? And is it different for different viewers?
On page 128 Berger says, "The expressive photograph--whose expressiveness can contain its ambiguity of meaning and "give reason" to it-- is a long quotation from appearances: the length here to be measured not by time but by a greater extension of meaning. . . the very same discontinuity allows us to read across them and to find a synchronic coherance which, instead of narrating instigates ideas."
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Considering all that Berger says about the photograph as a "quotation" from appearances, it seems to me that an image would have been a valid choice in this exercise. I think it's interesting that none of us (myself included) chose an image from Berger as qualifying as "provocative." hmmm.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite quotes comes from Foss (2004): “The world produced by visual rhetoric is not always-or even often-clear, well organized, or rational, but is instead, a world made up of human experiences that are messy, emotional, fragmented, silly, serious, and disorganized” (310).
ReplyDeleteFor me this quote talks about the wide range of human experience. Not only does this quote help to define visual rhetoric in the means of elements and relationships between artist and audience, but also the idea of assessment. Humans naturally experience and go through all of these feelings; therefore, we are able to connect at a higher level through an image that someone else created. We are able to feel what the author has intended for us to feel. Louis Rosenblatt’s reader’s response theory is based on taking a reading and having a two way conversation between writer and audience. As educated individuals we are able to look at an image and create that same dialogue. We all have different impressions, reactions, or readings based on our personal experiences. This makes visual rhetoric a personalized media form; A deep reading of our souls and where we stand in our lives. How we assess an image will be completely different if we do not have a base for interpreting visuals; yet, that is why the conversations based on visual rhetoric continue. Berger constantly reinforces the idea of how visual rhetoric is completely ambiguous, especially if there is no text to give guidance to the readers thought process. Visual rhetoric is a new type of reading and is amazing when we can look at an image from different perspectives to tell a story that has been captured in the midst of the event.
While reading I have been struggling with the tension we discussed in class between consumption and production. While Berger’s book is amazing for exploring what critical consumption may include, I found myself drawn to the portions when he discusses the production of images.
ReplyDeleteI am particularly in love with the notion that “a professional photographer tries, when taking a photo, to choose an instant which will persuade the public viewer to lend it an appropriate past and future.”
I started to become worried that with all his talk of image as ambiguity that he was going to go so far in the opposite direction of the intentional fallacy that he would end with “well, the authors has no control and the reader and context have all the control.” I appreciated his nod to a thoughtful compromise of sorts. No, authors may not be able to exactly control the way their images are taken in; however, that does not make it all relativistic: there are more and less effective ways to go about creating an image. You can indeed include things that will work to persuade your audience to see the photo in a different way.
However, as soon as I was “comfortable” with this, it was instantly complicated. Darn you academia! For my decade image I looked at the “Bliss” background image on the 2001 version of Windows XP (the blue sky and green field). This image has come to mean “computers” or “Microsoft”—not “Califronia” or “Napa Valley” which is what it literally shows. The author, Charles O]Rear, took this photo as part of a National Geographer photo shoot of vineyards near Napa Valley. In no way did he construct this image so the audience would create “an appropriate past and future” pertaining to computers. O’Rear had almost no control over the intake of this image once Microsoft purchased it. Here it was not the author or the image that worked to create meaning; it was a third party corporation. It was Hill and Helmers notion of dissemination and reception that was “controlling” here.
Just as I start to grasp an idea of how images work another stakeholder enters the scene and muddles it up...
I agree, Josh. Though, I did consider using an image--particularly the one of the young girl chasing the train.
ReplyDeleteThe one I did choose, I found provocative because as Berger seems to struggle with the very thing that he identifies as foremost with him--the expressiveness of the photograph. He states that the "length here to be measured not by time but by a greater extension of meaning. . . the very same discontinuity allows us to read across them and to find a synchronic coherance which, instead of narrating instigates ideas." This suggests the ephemeral nature of a photograph, while limited by time, at same time it is freed by time to become something to which meaning is attached or from which it is made according to when it is being accessed.
This reminds me also of some Native African beliefs about capturing one's spirit in photograph or replications of the external being. This act binds up the one photographed leaving him or her to be this image as captured not the living spirit that carries on beyond death.
"Here it was not the author or the image that worked to create meaning; it was a third party corporation. It was Hill and Helmers notion of dissemination and reception that was “controlling” here."
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, Natalie.
The notion of controlling—factors, companies, motives—means that photos have no agency. What of the photographer? Certainly photography is an act of exigency but if the meaning that we take can be manipulated according to environment and what is unknown about context, though its existence may be ephemeral but its meaning is not.
The part of our readings to date that strikes me the most was by Berger on pages 94-5.
ReplyDelete“It may clarify what we mean by a trace if we ask how a drawing differs from a photograph. A drawing is a translation. That is to say each mark on the paper is consciously related not to the real or imaged “model”, but also to every mark and space already set out on the paper...In a drawing an apple is made round and spherical; in a photograph, the roundness and the light and the shade of the apple are received as a given.
Since I have an AA in Fine Art and hope to complete my BFA someday, I was drawn to Berger's claim for a couple of reasons. First, I find myself wondering how people sitting for a painted portrait differs from people sitting for a photographed portrait. In both cases, the goal is to produce a realistic image of the people. In fact, I have seen pencil drawings that can be and are mistaken for B&W photographs. At least in this case, I'd argue that a composed picture is more similar to than different from a drawing because the photographer, like the artist, attempts to control lighting, depth of field, and angle of the lens based on his or her experience. That is, the figuration is impregnated by experience and consciousness. His discussion of Marcel appearing to have his “bust” taken echos my point (36). When a portrait is painted or photographed, I'd argue that both the painter/photographer and the subject are attempting to influence the final product, the message that will remain as their legacy. I think I'm venturing into the realm of authorial intent here...
At the same time, I like the idea of translating/drawing and quoting/photographing. As a novice artist, I want any perceptual distortions present in the drawing to be there because I want them there not because I can't draw it image “correctly.” In some ways, I think this idea is similar to translating a text. If a phrase is ambiguous, the translator needs to make a judgment call and perhaps even offer an alternative translation in a foot or endnote, not unlike an artist making several studies before launching into the final painting or drawing. A photograph captures to moment and like a quotation can be taken out of context and misinterpreted.