Visual Glossary: Observer 
Introduction
Robust definition
Critical Reflection
Conclusion
Observer (n.) /əbˈzəːvə/
nominally a free sovereign individual but who is also a privatized isolated subject enclosed in a quasi-domestic space separated from a public exterior world (Crary 33)
Observer - participant in a political landscape of vision
The subjective vision that endowed the observer with a new perceptual autonomy and productivity was simultaneously the result of the observer having been made into a subject of new knowledge of new techniques of power (Crary 35)
manipulation of one's vision
[case to debunk - with so-called technological advances...] by the 1820s, then, we effectively have a model of autonomous vision (Crary 35)
The observer is simultaneously the object of knowledge and the object of procedures of stimulation and normalization, which have the essential capacity to produce experience fro the subject (Crary 41)
Format
encyclopedic
manifesto so 1. 2. 3.
debunk myths?
CA: yes stimulation and normalization, yet not necessarily all-knowing - does not know this is an image of an image until further notice by photographer herself
term importance in field of visual culture - involves act of seeing; performativity
Works Cited
Crary, Jonathan. “Modernizing Vision.” Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster, Bay Press, 1988, pp. 29-44.
strive for authenticity - the only prerequisite organ for vision is unreliable, cannot surpass the hegemonic grasp of the digital apparatus (smartphone camera) "that continues to define and regulate the status of an observer" (Crary 30)
Warning: Observer has no agency
It is for the creator of the image to know, and the observer to never find out.
observer hence in vulnerable position
Context/Description
lens of smartphone camera disrupt visual order
Problematize?
On one of the hottest days ever recorded in the history of Amsterdam winters, I, as an observer, proceeded to take my smartphone out to capture an image of the blue, blue skies. I looked up...
image "as an apparently autonomous source of its own purposes and meanings on the other" (Mitchell 175)
Mitchell, W.J.T. "Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture." Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 1, no. 2, 2002, pp. 165-181.
adapt to?
By focusing upon the playful qualities of camera phone practices, we can begin to understand places as sites for ambient meandering and co-presence (Hjorth 336)
Hjorth, Larissa. "Visualizing Play: A Case Study of a Camera Phone Game for Playful Re-Imaginings of Place." Television and New Media, vol. 18, no. 4, 2016, pp. 336-350.
Positivist view: what you see is what you get BUT only when you stop and question, that you will finally see things as what they are, yet this is also under the presupposition that the Creator is telling the truth
perhaps collective force of the creator of the image, angle of the smartphone devices and the image itself shape the narrative, not as innocent as we think they are