http://www.lenscratch.com/
http://1000wordsphotographymagazine.blogspot.com/
http://cupofpea.blogspot.com/
http://hotshoeblog.wordpress.com/
http://littlebrownmushroom.wordpress.com/
We also had first seminar in visual representation on the same day, it involved discussing a chapter from John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”. This chapter is only images and has no text, which can seem quite odd to many people used to seeing images with text. Text is often placed with images to tell the viewer about the narrative of the images, yet John Bergers has done other wise.
Why Berger has produced a chapter in a book based solely on images?
Berger could have produced a chapter only of images to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions to what the images are about and their own beliefs about the image. By not including text there is no distraction. Text could have also provide additional information which could have changed or altered the audience's view of the images. Having text for the audience, they are basically told how to think.
What narratives are suggested by this sequence of images? What ties them together?
I noticed that many of the pictures portray women and we disscussed this in our session, we all agreed that the women in the pictures are shown as unequals and are even shown within pictures with slaves and animals. He seems to look at women as a low social class and never show women in a position of power, often depicting them in domistic setting as wives with children or just sexual objects. However in some pictures the women are shown as temptresses or witches using their bodies to surduce and over power men, this could mean that Bergers also looks down women seeing them as evil and unholy.
Following on from this how can the reading of these images change over time?
As time passes the images slowly become less relatable to the passing generations, as cultures change and certain issues become less important. This changes how we look at the images and the context we understand them in. Women are no longer seen as unequal to men, now both work alongside eachother and have equal rights. Also any pictures with biblical refences are seen less important to todays generation, as religion is less dominant in everyday life and belief. Much of the pictures in the chapter show issues that were around in the time that they were created, meaning these no longer relate to us and are simply a window into the past. Yet because we wasnt live at that time, we could mistake the pictures are fact, which in most seem unlikely.
It was interesting to discuss the issues of context and how people can look upon images differently, this is important to understand how your own personal work could be seen different to how you could wish.
