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Seeing Visual Culture, Rankine’s excerpt details the scrutiny and…

- - - - Weems' piece utilizes common racial labelings of "people of color" and "Black" to portray a collage of Black individuals cast in differently-hued monochromatic squares. The piece normalizes these varied individuals while using wordplay to draw what attention these individuals usually don't receive in times of need or crisis to them as at-peace subjects.
  - - - Blonde Venus follows the narrative of a woman struggling with her identity and self-expression as she tries to retain custody of her child while being a cabaret performer. Amid the period in which she must focus on her motherly roles, the protagonist, Helen, appears to take on a more modest and gender-conforming approach to outfits and decor. It is as she is "released" from the restraints of motherhood or expectations to immediately care for her son that she dresses extravagantly and more unconventionally, such as in male-associated suits.
    - - Visible hue reflects more than just lighting an ambience throughout this film. Rich golden and other red and vibrant based tones contrast the protagonist's tight-knit immigrant community in contrast to the neutral, casual themes of settled residents of New York City. Blue emerges initially as a note for blessings of fertility but becomes marked with strain for family pressure as the protagonist remains unable to conceive.
    - - This series of photographs presents blue-hued imagery of icebergs in juxtaposition or coexistence with additional layered images of Black women and vertical strips of illegible text. The women and their eyes and faces tend to lie behind the icebergs, whereas the text covers the icebergs. Amid the layering and blue’s interplay with a distancing technique, the obscured, “further-away” Black female bodies illustrate an alienation of Black female bodies from social focus, with the melting of the icebergs and lighter hues of blue bringing them into sight only then really bringing their undeniable presence to the viewer
    - - Benjamin contrasts a more static and resolute perspective of the world and its components in adulthood against the more versatile, multi-faceted perspective of the world in childhood.
        
        “Children’s drawings take colorfulness as their point of departure. Their goal is color in its greatest possible transparency, and there is no point in form, area, or concentration into a single space. For a pure vision is not concerned not with space and objects but with color…” (page 51)
    - - Light, as this article demonstrates, stands as more than a simple element of making the visual world noticeable to the eye. Language has incorporated a sense of obtained and expanded knowledge - enlightenment - from not only visual cues but also other sensory processes as well. However, the objective knowledge obtained by observation largely filters into and frames the development of "certifiable" fact that can be observed and subjectively verified or approved of.
    - - Minh-Ha's work dissects the allotment of what it means to be "invisible" according to three main categories: the unforeseeable, censorship, and absence or emptiness. Whereas some elements of the unforeseeable such as catastrophic natural disasters cannot be curtailed, actions such as social movements can certainly be quashed in their early stages. Censorship-enforced invisibility often plagues the minority party, bringing an equality-representative dialogue to the table.
  - - - Daston and Galison determine over the course of this article that subjectivity - as differing from objective fact as it is - also contains a personal subjectivity in that its range across individuals ranges significantly. Focusing on color, the authors remark the following: “Even among subjective visual effects that numerous researchers, after some practice, could train themselves to see, individual variation persisted. This was often the case for phenomenon of color vision… Even for more mundane, objective visual phenomena, psychologist reported significant individual differences.” (pages 278-279)
    - - Melville reflects on the range of connotations associated with the achromatic white hue, ranging from its traditional symbolism of purity and religious celebrations of esteemed holy figures to the white or mortal threats such as polar bears. Despite sharing the same or similar chromatic appearances, the items incorporating the white essence rely on their social connotations to determine where to spurn or embrace whiteness
- - - - Lewis utilizes metaphors and personification to voice her perceived similarities to Black explorer Matthew Henson, as well as illustrating her life after suffering a traumatic brain injury. She equates falling down the stairs - her accident - as similar to Henson’s discovering characteristics of the general “unknown” nature of the Arctic. Venturing through the “darkness” of the two spaces - one a dimly lit void where stairs will eventually be built and the other a cold environment obscured by snow - produces a new knowledge of what seemed to be distant territory. Henson brings with hima new familiarity of the Arctic yet is not acknowledged for his accomplishments despite many accolades being provided to the white explorer he accompanied, Robert Peary. Similarly, as Lewis regains memories of facts and movements such as basic speech and walking, there are days where such memories and knowledge leaves her, and she is left trying to reassert her mastery and memory of these things.
    - - In “Molyneaux Redux,” Kleege emphasizes that just as the traditionally-visual social realm prioritizes sight-based identification and connections to objects, so too does the non-seeing eye calibrate senses such as texture and sound to effectively navigating and interpreting the surrounding world’s objective and cultural norms. Expanding on the proposition of a surgery to blind individuals, Kleege remarks that the few sight-restoring operations undergone by congenitally blind individuals grant these individuals access to extremely limited characteristics of the visual world. Alongside this limited experience, the personal connections generated using sensory cues excluding sight can separate the reality of one’s surroundings with their objective visual nature. Beyond the reality of conflict between the subjective perception of the world and its true nature or difference with visually-based subjective norms, the article demonstrates the ways of processing the world don’t always smoothly gel with the visual one when other senses are focused on first.
    - - “But over the last decade or so, something dramatic has happened. Visual culture has changed form. It has become detached from human eyes and has largely become invisible. Human visual culture has become a special case of vision, an exception to the rule. The overwhelming majority of images are now made by machines for other machines, with humans rarely in the loop. The advent of machine-to-machine seeing has been barely noticed at large, and poorly understood by those of us who’ve begun to notice the tectonic shift invisibly taking place before our very eyes.
    - - “ And thus, Simpson shows what language can do: proclaim, fix in place, define, revise, affirm, recognize, delimit, undergird. But here in the dark, in a domain generally far from human habitation, language fades out like a radio signal slowly being lost.”
  - - - The film portrays a struggle in identity as former stage actress Elisabet becomes hospitalized and meets her caretaker, Alma. Visual imagery such as compression of the women's faces close together, embraces between the pair, and the blending of their faces into one image contributes to the confusion of overlap between the two women's ideas as potentially one unit.
    - - This collection of black and white photographs documents both present-day renditions of and historically-based sites along the end of the Underground Railroad trail. The achromatic imagery is a nod to photographer Roy DeCarava, from whom Bey was inspired to depict “a world shaped by blackness.” Independently the images have sparse ties to one another, ranging from depicting front lawns and picket fences to Lake Erie. Yet they unite under the cultural ties to their achromatic appearance and the historically-significant path they mark for Black history and attempts at assertion of bodily freedom. e sites reside that unifies them as contemplation of the Black struggle to assert both individual freedom and equivalent respect and acknowledgement compared to majorities.
        
        Shawn Michelle Smith, “Photography, Darkness, and the Underground Railroad: Dawoud Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black,” American Quarterly Vol 73 (1), 2021, 25-52.
        
        "'Night Coming Tenderly, Black' is a historical project, but the striking darkness of the prints registers the unavailability of historical evidence and the lack of material markers left latent in the physical landscape" (Smith 30).
    - - These canvases have been painted fully white and were hung to reflect how light and shadows altered the images on the canvas based on the lighting’s positioning and movement of surveyors along the wall holding the canvases. The canvas could serve as an art statement on its own - with paint already being on the canvas - yet the light and shadows add to the nature of these pieces as constantly-evolving paintings.
    - - Jarman’s work, a tie-in to his film Blue, contextualizes his relationship to the fading visual world and his struggle with HIV/AIDS through the blue hue spectrum. Blue serves not only as an identifying factor across visual imagery, but also as a cultural indicator of emotions and feelings such as calmness, grief, distance, and loss.
        
        “In the pandemonium of image/I present you with the universal Blue/Blue an open door to soul/ An infinite possibility Becoming tangible” page 113
  - - - Weschler discusses factors generating and influencing Los Angeles's sunlight that in turn make the light a staple to understanding Los Angeles and its allure. From still air to miniscule particles impacting the shine and visibility of the light, outside forces of natural and man-made design factor into the imagery that decidedly generates the notable LA seamless glow.
- - - - "The Country of the Blind" by H.G. Wells
        
        Within this short story, protagonist Nunez stands in opposition with a larger, blinded society reliant on other sensory cues to process the mountainous terrain around them. Nunez, a resident of a world normalizing visual cues and language, develops a social alienation with this group. They mock him for his ineptitude in their normative mannerisms.
      - The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, George Cukor, 1939)
        
        Within The Wizard of Oz, protagonist Dorothy stumbles from a normative, sepia-tinted life in Kansas to a vibrant technicolor realm of Oz. The allure of the atmosphere in part helps with outlining Dorothy's path to her way home. Yet vibrant dark reds often mark her human outcast status amid a more magically-bearing realm
      - Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Citizen (2014)
        
        “Only then do you realize that you are among ‘the others out in public’ and not among ‘friends’ (page 10).
    - - Hans Christian Andersen, "The Shadow"
        
        This short story involves a narrative of a literal "overshadowing" of a man and his personality and actions. An unnamed scholar loses his shadow after seeing it projected into a neighboring house. He commands the shadow to investigate and return, only to find the shadow remains absent after departing. A period of time passes - in which the scholar's health deteriorates - and his shadow returns as a refined gentleman accepted by larger society. The shadow-man requests that the scholar become his shadow. Despite resistance, the scholar eventually falls to the shadow-like role, cast out by larger society compared to the more presentable shadow-man.
      - Georgina Kleege, “Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account,” Journal of Visual Culture Vol 4 (2) (2005), 179-190.
        
        Kleege’s article peers into the norm of the Hypothetical Blind Man in Western culture and their alienation from the larger, visually minded society perceiving such individuals as weak or dependent on sight-bearing resources for assistance. Sensory techniques based largely on touch and hearing provide guidance on normatively visually-associated characteristics such as depth of stairs and the viscosity of liquids.
        
        Yet amid these adaptations, visually and auditory-infused language seeks to exclude those without access to either sense. For instance, Kleege reflects on one news reporter’s remark to blind pianist Ray Charles asking his reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The reporter assumes that the visual depiction of the Twin Towers’ fall is what touched onlookers and viewers alike amid the incident. Yet Kleege notes that individuals near the incident site at the time starkly recalled the auditory components of bodies falling or the towers crumbling (187). Kleege continues to note that the blind steer clear of the notion of being disabled or lesser-than, instead adjusting their normative human existence to cater for a lack of sight in non visually-based mannerisms (187). This contrasts with a heavy visually-reliant society while gaining traction as understanding world view and the social and emotional depths beneath.
    - - Oliver Sacks, “The Mind’s Eye: What the blind see,” The New Yorker (2003)
        Sacks analyzes how legally and fully-blind individuals have adapted their daily life and worldview amid a society with norms of lifestyle and comprehension ingrained in visual culture and descriptions. While some chose to fully surrender their vision and prepare for a visionless world, others interconnected sensations and experiences such as synesthesia and visual encoding in the mind’s eye rather than the physical. The latter format tended to upkeep the visionless individuals’ sight-encoded memory and handling of their surroundings. Their “sight” is related to personal memory or connections made between pre-existing vision and individual connections between perceived sensory connections and a related sight. While differing from the normative sight-bearing population, these individuals’ personal processing of the world around them also puts them in unique visual worldview positions compared to their peers.
  - - - Monty Python: “How Not to Be Seen”
        
        Individuals are pointed out in a series of landscape scenery shots. Once they come into view, they are gunned down by an off screen force. Being seen or known in another’s consciousness is cast as a form of endangerment to the individual, who does not belong in the respective setting
      - 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.
        
        While occasionally referring to the threat of bodily harm, this article focuses moreso on the isolation and notability of the black body within the larger white-centric social eye. The black body, in contrast to the normative white image, holds the weight of not only representing the individual and their strengths and being, but also justifying and reaffirming norms associated with their ethnic group and related stereotypes. Such responsibility thus sways perception of individual actions as representative of a larger body that in turn receives social, financial, physical, or other consequences
    - - All Light Everywhere Baltimore spy cameras
    - - Vito Acconci, Following Piece (1969)
        
        This series of photographs depicts Acconci breaking the norm of privacy and anonymity in the public space, as he chooses random subjects to follow and photograph until these subjects reach a “private area.” The specifics of what is deemed a private area are unknown. Regardless, Acconci justifies his pursuits by asserting his status as an observer generating art through photographs, with this title also serving from his point of view to exonerate him from a “stalker” status to an omnipresent observer.
      - Sophie Calle, Suite Vénitienne (1979)
        
        In this artist book and the connected series of photographs, Calle documents her pursuit of a male stranger, referred to as “Henry,” as he moves from Paris to Venice. Calle utilizes tactics from wearing wigs and disguises to convincing her neighbor to photograph Henry amid her pursuit. Her reasoning for the following progresses from supposed unattached curiosity to amorous intent surrounding the man. Henry eventually discovers how Calle has been pursuing him beyond walking the city streets and invading part of his sense of personal privacy.
  - - - Syreeta McFadden, “Teaching the camera to see my skin”
        
        Within the article, McFadden references inconsistencies with the appearance of brown and black skin in comparison to white skin in photographs. As the film of the time rendered these skin tones as background hues and lower in quality, so too did photography suppress that to which it wasn't attuned to.
      - David Batchelor, “Whitescapes,” in Chromophobia (Reaktion Books, 2000), 9-20
        
        This excerpt delves into the isolation of chromatic colors in contrast to a "pure" white that lacks a chromatic-bearing appearance. From a literal sense, white - especially within the Minimalist perspective - notably reduces color's presence in any particular space space. Batchelor, for instance, speaks of an "uninterrupted" white that tended to "repel" both other colors and specific individuals contrasting with its more blank-leaning nature within a given residence (9-10). Culturally, white varies in the symbolism it carries in relation to the color spectrum. From the "pure and holy" religious imagery associated with whiteness to its "lifelessness" and deprivation of hue or vibrancy compared to other "colorful" beings or objects, Batchelor marks a state of white that expels both other hues and itself from necessarily existing in harmony in a given space.
      - Yves Klein, Le Vide (1958)
        
        Within this art exhibit, a large cabinet resides in an otherwise empty, white-painted room. The lack of any presence of color distinguishes the cabinet as "other-than" while creating a "void" of white space. In this void, the darker cabinet clearly contrasts with the background while occupying what little space the room and any visitors to the exhibit don't occupy. Whiteness dominates the space even amid other beings' residency.
    - - Three Colors: Blue8 finds protagonist Julie awash with grief and eventual detachment from memories of her past life with her deceased husband and child following a car crash. The grieving process manifests in the intense lighting, prop-design, and environmental omnipresence of blue. Said intensity dims with time and gives way to other shades such as reds and earth tones as Julie lessens her detachment.
    - - “Anna’s mobile, like Hiorns’s copper sulfate crystals (the child’s science experiment of growing crystals grows out of control) grows and multiplies through the film. Born from the sugary shards of her daughter’s blue sucker, the mobile operates as the source, not unlike those paintings of the same name by Ingres and Courbet” (page 137)
    - - Le Corbusier, “A Coat of Whitewash: The Law of Ripolin,” in Color, 82-84.
        
        This passage stylizes the concept of whitewashing as morally cleansing, enabling the full, true identity of the individual present to the public. The “Law of Ripolin” refers to Corbussier’s proposing that one paint their walls with white Ripolin paint to expel “shadows and dark corners” repelling the true self from personal and public view. In removing obstructions of “pure” authenticity, including colors, Corbusier encourages the breakdown and focus of worldview solely among an object or being’s basic form.
      - Richard Dyer, “White,” Screen 29:4 (Autumn 1988): 44–64.
        
        Dyer's article peers into the historical norms and predominance of the white and Caucasain presence in mainstream films. A heavy emphasis on binarism between black and white exists between these two shades' existence, as well as with the racial groups they are associated with. Despite a supposed "white reliance" on black culture or labor, the white-presented image of black casts it as primative or disorderly compared to a more organized, sophisticated whiteness.
      - 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.
  - - - This film, a narration of events among an unchanging blue-toned screen, represents some of Jarman’s personal experiences with AIDS-related complications rendering him only able to see in shades of blue. The use of orchestral pieces and descriptive language, amid a variation in narrators and sound effects, pieces together both a personification of blue in contrast to other colors and Jarman’s daily interactions and tasks growing hindered
        in relation to AIDS’ effects on his mobility and sight.
    - - "Colors/Black" proposes a potential for being and various personal interpretations of surroundings and other elements in correlation with a space predominated by or containing blackness and darkness. Such a space can be isolating from a more hue-based, detail-containing environment, like entering a cave after having resided within a larger, green-predominant forested area. However the openness and lack of detail associated with this darkness void, LaFarge asserts, offers a space in which the subjective human mind can choose to interpret the meaning and relationship between darkness and the environment or the self.
    - - This brief narrative peers into the life of a Black man living underground and siphoning off electricity in his living space. An attempt to affirm his existence while also rebelling against a taxing social and financial system burdening him establishes the powers of invisibility in terms of liberties and punishments. This, additionally, delves into the beginnings of discussing norms for what makes one notable as contributing to or existing within society and how treatment of the individual varies given these norms
    - - Steyerl's film imagines and presents a multitude of methods in which a person can become invisible to the naked eye. These means of obscurity range from personal self-claims of obscurity to using makeup or editing technology to physically remove oneself from a setting. Yet amid this hidden nature, the obscured individual is still present within and can influence the surrounding environment. In the case of hiding behind screens or being "edited out," a question emerges of whether the scope of what one can change while invisible also goes unnoticed by the naked eye or signals an unseen being's presence.