Ways of Seeing by John BergerThis post is in reference to December 9, 2007 "Survival of the Richest"
The NYT decided to run an image with an article on a book about the "evolution of economics" (so to speak). It shows the evolution of man, in terms of his/her financial wealth. Unfortunately, they chose to make the images black, and half looked like apes (see the post below)
I have questions about the NYT publishing black images of man´s evolution... the cave man walk really stands out. The NYT would probably deny any subtle meaning to the image. Yet, the "black/white" polemic continues. Don't the people who decide what images go into the NYT know which are offensive and which are not? Well, they may say it wasn't a conscious decision to choose a figure of a black man looking like an ape... but I can't imagine that the most important newspaper in the world has people that know so little about the interpretation of images.
The evolution of our consciousness is about people becoming aware of what their statements and behaviors represent. Some people call this "looking too deep" - yet, could that be an excuse from not having to think about what you say and do?
When I was studying photography, one of my professors (Carol Vuchetich) used to say that it was really important to think about the symbolism of the image. Photographers (and editors) are often drawn to an image that is striking and will catch the eye. For a certain type of photography, especially journalism, this is very important... yet she said it was just as necessary to portray any persons in the image in a respectful way --- not saying ideal, saying realistic- an image that does not enhance negative stereotypes. This is because whatever image we choose (modernist or conceptual) will send a message. The image sent with the NYT article is the long time assumption that blacks are primitive, or "like animals." This was recently emphasized when Noble Prize winner James Watson said that whites are on a higher scale of evolution than blacks. It doesn't help when an "expert" says something totally wrong. Since we have a tendency to follow the experts (i.e. whoever shows up on Larry King, or worse, the anti-Christ who represents the anti-immigration movement, expert Lou Dobbs).
John Berger's book titled Ways of Seeingis agreat place to learn about the power and influence of images. If you are not into reading, there is also a BBC documentary on John Berger and the book.
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Carol Vuchetich and George Krause were my photography professors. You can see a few of my photographs at mythologyandreality.blogspot.com
http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=%22john+berger%22+way+of+seeing&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi
1 comment:
yet, could that be an excuse from not having to think about what you say and do?
Yes, that's exactly it.
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