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Seeing Visual Culture by Syra Galan Luque, Interpretations of blue from…

- - - - “The assumption seems to be that because the blind are immune to images, they must also be immune to the significance of the events and therefore somehow detached from, or indifferent to, the nation’s collective horror and grief" (Georgina Kleege, “Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account,” Journal of Visual Culture Vol 4 (2) (2005), 179-190.)
      - “Researchers reinforce the belief that blindness is such an all encompassing tragedy that even a cure cannot undo the damage” (Georgina Kleege, “Molyneaux Redux,” Invisible Culture 19 (2013))
      - Sighted people often believe they are superior to blind people and think they can 'save' them by providing them with vision (by guiding them through their day or by giving them surgery)
        
        “The fools must be blind.” (H.G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind” (1904))
        
        But even sighted people are unable to see everything at all times
        
        “The camera is designed to limit what can be seen by this witness; there’s always a body behind the bodycamera” (All light Everywhere (dir. Theo Anthony, 2021))
    - - “The mirror stage involves primarily the identification of the I, whereas the shadow stage involves mainly the identification of the other.” (Christopher Turner and Victor I. Stoichita, “A Short History of the Shadow: an Interview with Victor I. Stoichita,” Cabinet 24.)
    - - “When you think about it, it’s surprising that we can see black at all: our eyes are engineered to receive light; in its absence, you’d think we simply wouldn’t see, any more than we taste when our mouths are empty” (Paul LaFarge, “Colors/Black,” Cabinet Magazine 36 (2009-2010))
        
        But white, a color that's oh so valued in our society, is not easier to perceive than black
        
        “White is not anything really, not an identity, not a particularising; whereas white is not anything really, not an identity, not a particularising quality, because it is everything - white is no colour because it is all colours” (Richard Dyer, “White,” Screen 29:4 (Autumn 1988): 44–64.)
        
        A white not contrasted with non-white colors is barely visible
        
        Silent compositions (Robert Rauschenberg, White Paintings (1951))
        
        (Mary Corse. Untitled. (White Grid, Horizontal Strokes), 1969)
      - Why then is black considered the most inclusive color if no one bothers in letting it be seen
        
        “Black is generous and generative, inclusive and encompassing. Black is color, noncolor, and all colors. All colors are initially, eventually black, but they cannot give or give back unless and until they see themselves and others as such. Black is and is not (only) itself. To see or not to see is the question of blackness itself: “You could build a world out of need or you could hold / everything black and see.”” (Jared Sexton, “All Black Everything")
      - Black people carry the burden of being true to themselves as well as being seen by others in a way that will not put them at risk
        
        “Not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to white” (Franz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness,” in Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader, eds. Les Back and John Solomos (NY: Routledge, 2000), 257-65.)
        
        “Apparently your own invisibility is the real problem causing her confusion” (Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Citizen (2014))
        
        This leads to black people often becoming hyper visible in a way that represents them untruthfully at the same time as so poorly seen and overshadowed by their white peers that they become invisible
        
        “As many have argued, in US visual culture black bodies have often been “overexposed” and made hypervisible in ways that make black subjects “underexposed” and invisible” (Shawn Michelle Smith, “Photography, Darkness, and the Underground Railroad: Dawoud Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black,” American Quarterly Vol 73 (1), 2021, 25-52.)
        
        “Only non-whiteness can give whiteness any substance. The reverse is not the case - [people of color] do not need the comparative element that seems at this stage indispensable for the study of whites" (Richard Dyer, “White,” Screen 29:4 (Autumn 1988): 44–64.)
        
        And despise its lack of importance when presented alone, white is surrounded by positive connotations
        
        The idea that white is clean:
        “Then comes inner cleanness, for the course adopted leads to refusal to allow anything at all which is not correct, authorized, intended, desired, thought-out: no action before thought”
        (Le Corbussier, “A Coat of Whitewash: The Law of Ripolin,” in Color, 82-84.)
        
        The idea that non-whiteness is strange, uncomfortable: “When you are surrounded with shadows and dark corners you are at home only as far as the hazy edges of the darkness your eyes cannot penetrate”
        (Le Corbussier, “A Coat of Whitewash: The Law of Ripolin,” in Color, 82-84.)
        
        The idea that white is noble:
        “Whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things - the innocence of brides, the benignity of age”
        (Herman Melville, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” excerpted in Color (MIT, 2008), 37-38.)
        
        The idea that white is a role model:
        “This [white] space was clearly a model for how a body ought to be: enclosed, contained, sealed. The ideal body: without flesh of any kind, old or young, beautiful or battered, scented or smelly; without movement, external or internal; without appetites”
        (David Batchelor, “Whitescapes,” in Chromophobia (Reaktion Books, 2000), 9-20.)
        
        The idea that white is 'normal': “Whiteness as an unmarked category assuming the standard of ‘normal’ and characterized by its invisibility and, therefore, only definable in opposition to non-white and not-fully white others”
        (Hilaria Loyo, “Blinding Blondes: Whiteness, Femininity, and Stardom” in Questions of Colour in Cinema, ed. Wendy Everett (Oxford and New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 179-196.)
        
        The idea of white as everything: “Absolute white. White beyond all whiteness. White of the coming of the White. White without compromise, through exclusion through total eradication of nonwhite. Insane, enraged white, screaming with whiteness. Fanatical, furious, riddling the retina. Horrible electric white implacable, murderous. White in bursts of white. God of 'white'. No, not a goda howler monkey. (Let's hope my cells don't blow apart.) End of white. I have a feeling that for a long time to come white is going to have something excessive for me” (Yves Klein, “The Evolution of Art towards the Immaterial” (1959), in Color, 120-122.)
        
        (Blonde Venus (dir. Joseph von Sternberg, 1932)
        
        (Ad Reinhardt poses in front of one of his paintings, date unknown.)
        
        (Ingmar Bergman, Persona (1966))
        
        This is seen in ads such as this one, where whiteness would be nothing special were it not compared to its dark counterpart
  - - - “And if someone compelled him to look at the light itself, wouldn't his eyes hurt, and wouldn't he turn around and flee towards the things he's able to see, believing that they're really clearer than the ones he's being shown?” (Plato, The Allegory of the Cave from The Republic, Book VII.)
    - - (Dawoud Bey, Night Coming Tenderly, Black:
        Untitled #2 (Trees and Farmhouse), 2017.)
      - (Dawoud Bey, Night Coming Tenderly, Black:
        Untitled #25 (Lake Erie and Sky), 2017.)
- - - - Furthermore, different types of people may perceive colors differently
        
        “The child's view of color represents the highest artistic development of the sense of sight; it is sight at its purest, because it is isolated. But children also elevate it to the spiritual level because they perceive objects according to their color content and hence do not isolate them, instead using them as a basis from which to create the interrelated totality of the world of the imagination” (Walter Benjamin, “A Child’s View of Color” in Selected Writings, Volume 1, (Cambridge: Belknap Press), 50-51.) - a matter of perception
    - - External elements such as light can have a lot of impact on the way things are perceived
        
        “A weird thing is how that light yields a simultaneous sense of distance and of flatness: things seem very sharp up close and far away, with nothing in between. And the uncanny result is that you lose yourself - somehow not outwardly but, rather, inwardly. Here, the light draws you inward.” (Lawrence Weschler, “LA Glows,” The New Yorker, Feb. 23, 1998.)
        
        “Light produces space, distance, orientation, calm contemplation; it is the gift that makes no demands, the illumination capable of conquering without force” (Hans Blumenberg, “Light as Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philosophical Concept Formation,” in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, edited by D. M. Levin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 30–54.)
  - - - (Sophie Calle, Suite Venitienne (1981))
      - (Vito Acconci, Following Piece (1969))
      - “We no longer look at images–images look at us” (Trevor Paglen, “Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You),” The New Inquiry, 2016.)
        
        And if every moment can be captured digitally, where is the line between reality and fabrication drawn
- - - - (Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztov Kieslowski, 1993)