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Seeing Visual Culture, image, We view certain elements of visual culture…

- - - - Georgina Kleege, “Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account,” Journal of Visual Culture
        Vol 4 (2) (2005), 179-190.
        "One gained the ability to perceive color. Another developed a sort of telepathic vision, allowing him to form images of places at great distances. Mary's sensor gave her a literal hindsight..."
      - Georgina Kleege, “Molyneaux Redux,” Invisible Culture 19 (2013)
        "She's learned to get around with her sight, though her movements are halting and uncertain. She often feels dizzy, so if the researchers are not looking, she closes her eyes."
      - Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Citizen (2014) "She says sometimes she can hear her own voice silently to whomever - you are saying this thing and I am not going to accept it."
      - The negatives of this change
        
        Hans Blumenberg, “Light as Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philosophical Concept
        Formation"
        "...that the technology for this discovery could ultimately make possible the most violent of methods and devices...lighting is used to refer to thoughtless accentuation by artificial light
        
        Shawn Michelle Smith, “Photography, Darkness, and the Underground Railroad: Dawoud Bey’s Night
        Coming Tenderly, Black,” American Quarterly Vol 73 (1), 2021, 25-52.
        "A lynching photograph shows a white man captured in the camera’s flash, posing at night by the naked body of an African American man hanging from a tree. Documentary images show African American men and women demonstrating and protesting racial injustice, caught in the arms of white policemen, fallen by the side of the road, wounded and bleeding."
      - This benefits of this change
        
        Syreeta McFadden, “Teaching the camera to see my skin”
        "I shoot primarily in color now. I've developed skills to subvert the blinkered design of tools that were never imagined for my hands, my face."
        
        Bey's work to capture the Underground Railroad built off changes in vision, to approach this piece in "black-and-white printing, and more particularly to gelatin silver prints..." to embody "a world shaped by blackness." This shift in the artist's methods were able to bring about the meaning of the work in a way that previous methods couldn't. Weens also seeks to change her photography methods to accurately capture the skintone of African Americans, which previous photographers struggled with. This same concept is further explored in the movie "Mother of George."
      - Mary Corse: The manipulation of light to change how a single still looks - the change in "objective" vision
    - - The film "All Light, Everywhere" comments on how we constantly seek to advance objective visual culture, by hyperfocusing on our views through recorded videos and images.
  - - - Georgina Kleege, “Molyneaux Redux,” Invisible Culture 19 (2013)
        "...she wonders, when they could just reach out and touch the objects for themselves. So perhaps that is the problem, she muses. Perhaps these people have no sense of touch"
      - This reliance overwhelming our senses
        
        Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Citizen (2014) "After considering Butler's remarks, you begin to understand yourself as rendered hypervisible in the face of such language acts."
        
        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.
        "Colour as a visible characteristic has a range of symbolic connotations but it has also been used to signal racial difference."
        
        The depiction of the main character in this movie (Blonde Venus) as a playboy's mistress comments on how our reliance on color and visual characteristics may cloud our judgement of situations and people. The main character in this movie is ridiculed and shamed for her job, and as a blonde girl, is used to comment on the "Blinding Blonde" trope. Often, people who encounter blondes already have preconceived notions of how they will act, showing how vision can overwhelm the rest of our senses.
        
        Paul LaFarge, “Colors/Black,” Cabinet Magazine 36 (2009-2010)
        "...who notes that sight, unlike touch or taste, continues to operate in the absence of anything visible..."
        
        Jared Sexton, “All Black Everything” "One sees black and black alone, or one sees everything else without it, we might even say against it. To see black at all is to see all black everything"
        
        Carol Mavor, excerpt from Blue Mythologies (Duke University Press, 2012)
        "...flavours are often inseparable from the artificial colours they love...ask a child what flavour they want and they will reply 'red' or 'blue.'"
      - This reliance leading to a fear of change
        
        Joan Didion, “Los Angeles Notebook" "There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air... The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument... To live with the Santa Ana is to accept...a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior."
        
        Richard Dyer, “White,” Screen 29:4 (Autumn 1988): 44–64.
        "Thus it is said that there are inevitable associations of white with light and therefore safety, and black with dark and therefore danger..."
        
        David Batchelor, “Chromophobia,” in Chromophobia (Reaktion Books, 2000), 21-49.
        "...colour has been the object of extreme prejudice in Western culture...the prejudice has remained unchecked and passed unnoticed."
    - - Joseph Albers, excerpts from Interaction of Color (1963)
        "If one says "Red"...and there are 50 people listening...it can be expected that there will be 50 reds...all these reds will be very different."
- - - - H.G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind” (1904) "'In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King.'"
      - Christopher Turner and Victor I. Stoichita, “A Short History of the Shadow: an Interview with Victor I.
        Stoichita,” Cabinet 24.
        "The ability to recognize one's shadow is actually a very difficult process..."
      - Hans Christian Andersen, "The Shadow" "'...only imagine, my shadow has gone mad; I suppose such a poor, shallow brain, could not bear much..."
      - Herman Melville, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” excerpted in Color (MIT, 2008), 37-38
        "Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour, and at the same time the concrete of all colours..."
      - 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.
        "An unfamiliar weight burdened me. The real world challenged my claims. In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties...The body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty."
      - Maria Popova, 19th Century Insight into the Psychology of Color and Emotion, The Atlantic (2012)
        Johannes Itten, excerpts from The Art of Color (1920)
        "But perhaps his most fascinating theories explore the psychological impact of different colors on mood and emotion -- "
      - Each individual has a unique view on visual culture
        
        Johannes Itten, excerpts from The Art of Color (1920)
        "Expression should come from within. 'To help a student discover his subjective forms and colors is to help him discover himself.'"
        
        Walter Benjamin, “A Child’s View of Color” in Selected Writings, Volume 1, (Cambridge: Belknap
        Press), 50-51.
        "Instead the world is full of color in a state of identity, innocence, and harmony. Children are not ashamed, since they do not reflect but only see."
        
        Robin Coste Lewis, Using Black to Paint Light: Walking Through a Matisse Exhibit Thinking about the Arctic and Matthew Henson
        "The thing which most astonishes you is the light...you stay inside and choose to watch the same wall turn fifty reds...slow, countless variations of blue. Blues you have never seen."
        
        Seph Rodney, Lorna Simpson Searches for Meaning in the Arctic Ice
        "These brutal and brutally lovely landscapes suggest a further shore, one that to be reached, both the viewer and the artist have to negotiate their way by sight, by following the lead of colored pigment, hue, tone, shape, iridescence, and curiosity and then when finally alone, contemplating the vastness of these possibilities we come to know by feeling our way through."
        
        The film "Blue" by Jarman comments on how each individual can associate certain visual elements with their own emotions, as the connotations of what we see vary from individual to individual. The individual in this film associates the color blue with his health, and the subsequent loss of it, while others might not do the same.
        
        In "Three Colors: Blue" a similar concept as "Blue" by Jarman is approached, except the main character associates the color blue with the loss of her husband and daughter. Her interaction with this color varies greatly after their passing, as a strong emotion is tied to it, that is unique to her.
      - Yves Klein, “The Evolution of Art towards the Immaterial” (1959), in Color, 120-122.
        "There are pre-psychological expanses, red, for example, presupposing a site radiating heat."
      - James Turrell: changing the perspective of the viewer would change how we see the sky.
  - - - H.G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind” (1904)
        "'Yes, see,' said Nunez, turning towards him, and stumbled against Pedro's pail.
        'His senses are still imperfect,' said the third blind man.
        'He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. Lead him by hand.'"
      - We seek validation from others
        
        Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Citizen (2014) "When you arrive and announce yourself, he blurts out, I didn't know you were black!"
        
        Ralph Ellison, excerpt from Invisible Man (1952) "...and opening the knife with my teeth - when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he, as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare"
        
        David Batchelor, “Whitescapes,” in Chromophobia (Reaktion Books, 2000), 9-20.
        "In particular, it was a world that would remind you, there and then, in an instant, of everything you were not..."
        
        Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (NY: Vintage Books, 1995) (1975), 195-228.
        Individuals are afraid to act out, from fear that they are being watched, and will not be validated, or will be punished, by others.
        
        Monty Python's 1971 piece and Steyerl's 2013 piece emphasize that we only consider ourselves to be "seen" if others notice us. We feel invisible and less perceived, although we exist with just as much permanence. This highlights the emphasis we place on seeking validation and notice from those around us.
        
        Similar to the concept of the Panopticon, Acconci's 1969 images and Calle's 1981 image can comment on how individuals act different when they know they are being watched by others. These pieces can comment on how following a certain individual changes greatly when they know they are being followed, as opposed to not knowing, because we place strong emphasis on the views of others.
      - Plato, The Allegory of the Cave from The Republic, Book VII
        "Wouldn't it be said of him that he'd returned from his upward journey with his eyesight ruined and that it isn't worthwhile even to try to travel upward?"
    - - Le Corbussier, “A Coat of Whitewash: The Law of Ripolin,” in Color, 82-84.
        "Whitewash exists wherever peoples have preserved intact the balanced structure of a harmonious culture. Once an extravenous element opposed to the harmony of the system has been introduced, whitewash disappears."
      - Stanley Cavell, “The World as a Whole: Color” in The World Viewed (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979), 80-100.
        "...color can serve to unify the projected world in another way...the world so unified is...a consistent region of make-believe"
      - Derek Jarman, “Into the Blue,” from Chroma: A Book of Color (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 103-124.
        "The arrival of indigo in Europe caused consternation... In France dyers were required to take oaths to not use indigo."
      - The 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" introduces color into the film against a mainly black and white background. By doing this, it seeks to bring out the same emotions in all of the audience. For example, the red cheeks on Dorothy are meant to emphasize her rosiness and innocence. The use of this color against neutral backdrops allows for the audience watching this to feel the same emotions, unifying their perspectives.