Berger's refers to an image by Van Gogh, he asks you to first read the line of writing at the top of the image.
"This is a landscape of a cornfield with birds flying out of it" (Berger)
'WHEATFIELD WITH CROWS' Van Gogh 1853-1890,
Berger then asks the reader to turn the page, but in this case there is no other page so just scroll down to view the same image and read the quote that is at the bottom.
'WHEATFIELD WITH CROWS' Van Gogh 1853-1890,
"This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself"(Berger's, Ways of Seeing)
Does the second excerpt from Berger's "Ways of seeing" change how you view the painting and how you respond to it?
Having no prior knowledge of Van Gogh and his practice as well as his struggle with mental illness how could you have picked up the despair and turbulence in this painting?
It is through past experience that we become learned in our ability to communicate feeling though words. These past experiences shape and influence our perception and prevent us at times from articulating exactly what it is that we are SEEING. We see before we speak, we use our words to form an image but it is in the verbalisation of these words that a misconstrued subjectiveness occurs.
How are we able to stop these past experiences influencing our 'way of seeing'?
This video exhibits the notion of blurred opinions and preconceived ideas through past experiences. This 2011 Lucy McRae short film for Show Studio, 'Fashion Body' was entitled VAGINA.
QUESTION YOURSELF.
If you watched this video without knowing its title would you have understood what was visually happening, could you put the peaces together?
Not knowing the title..
.
How does it make you feel?
Are you confronted by the imagery?
If YES, why?
Did you like the film?
YES
NO
Did your opinion of the film change after finding out its title?
If so WHY?
If it wasn't for the title 'VAGINA' positioned in bold letters and sitting above the clip do you think you would have understood the video differently? Would you have been able to put the imagery together with their connections to the female anatomy? Or would you have taken the film to be an aesthetically pleasing contemporary short film?
Maybe you could say I like to glaze over the surface of things, I tent to assume innocence. Nudity doesn't seem to shock me, when confronted with such things I tend to appreciate the object/film/being or image for what it is at that moment. Call it laziness but I tend to not read between the lines. This relates to my way of seeing I suppose? Most of the things we pass in a day we barely take the time to notice and appreciate, so why is it when we see something out of the mundane we pay such close attention to what, who, how and why? Why cant these images pass us by just as if we were passing another white picket fence or car on the street?
What is it that confronts us?
Is it the relationship we have with our own bodies that shapes our relationship to the concept of being viewed or being the viewer of the nude or naked?
Is it through lack of education?
Why is this type of topic so controversial, why do people shudder or retort when this topic is brought to the table.
What is the . . .
Vagina,
noun ( plural vagina's or vaginae /-niː/)
What is it about this word that causes us to react? This is a video I found that perhaps has very little to do with the topic I have been discussing but I thought It was so interesting I had to slip it in. I just loved the openness that these women displayed in relation to discussing their vagina's and their unhappiness with them. These woman are in search of the perfect vagina yet a lot of them don't even know what a normal vagina looks like, they don't know because they are too afraid to talk to their friends about it and if they do it is treated as a joke. There is a massive miscommunication being brought on by societies cowardice toward a topic that is so relatable and close to each individual.
It must be understood that I'm not suggesting we all walk around naked, no I love the idea of dressing, dressing is to transform oneself. It's trying to get to the root of the problem, the physiology of the mind and its power over our actions and reactions.
OK so I shall steer away from the topic of vagina's. So I may have gotten a little carried away with it all, it was just after watching this video I got really angry with the things people will do in the quest for perfection, what is perfection anyway? Who writes the rule books for perfection? OK onto another topic.
SEEING IS SUBJECTIVE . . .
"It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world"(John Berger's) is it this awareness of self and place that makes as apposed to what we find inappropriate or confronting in relation to seeing the nude or being naked. It is through the way we see that we understand our current situation taking into consideration...
social
political
cultural
religious
How do they effect our perception in relation to how we see our surrounds and how we see our selves situated in this environment?
This relates back to how past and present experience alters the way in which we see and how we interpret this, to articulate what it is we see is another thing, another challenge, or rather a choice.
Choice . . .
"we only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice"
The challenge is this . . .
what
who
how
how
why
WHAT . . .
What is is that we are seeing? Do we have a choice in what it is that we are seeing?
Like the saying says...
"to turn a blind eye"
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