"Practices of looking are not passive acts of consumption”

A response focusing on reading from Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture as well as reading from Document Design: A Guide for Technical Communicators

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In Chapter 1 of Practices of Looking, Strurken and Cartwright present the key idea of framing as it relates to social context. Using the O. J. Simpson trial as a prime example, the authors offer evidence for how even the slightest manipulation to a photo or modification in context or placement can alter the way an image is received with the public eye. Sturken and Cartwright make the point that, nearly 20 years later, this idea still holds true for how images are received and the meanings they may or may not intend to unveil. This idea of framing is expanded within Charles Sanders Peirce’s explanation of the three signs or representations.

The text states: “The creation of signs semiotically is usually the result of a combination of factors in an image, and this means that meaning is often derived through the combination of text and image” (32-33). This is seen in many commercials; viewers are initially unsure of what the commercial is really about until the tagline appears at the end of it. Take for example, a well-known Super Bowl commercial that aired in 1984. The commercial advertised the release of Apple’s Macintosh; however, it was not until the last frame of that commercial that viewers were told this via text. Common day examples might include commercials that appear to advertise jeans and t-shirts but in actuality are advertising religion and the word of god.

Similarly to the earlier mentioning of the value of beauty and its adapted definition in relationship to time, is the discussion regarding the value of art. Sturken and Cartwright write that certain economic value is gained, “in part through cultural determinations concerning what society judges to be important in assessing works of art” (35). This statement is nearly synonymous to the statement regarding the value of beauty: the “idea that different looks are favored and become the standard in different eras” (22). The authors further elaborate on this during the discussion of icons and particularly so in regard to Marilyn Monroe. This relationship forms a question: If what is once valued as art (e.g., Van Gogh’s Irises) then loses its value as it is reproduced for popular consumption, how will ‘beauty’ ever be valued if its criteria is always being duplicated? (I’ve been working with this thought and have had trouble getting this question out on paper the way I mean to ask.)

Sturken and Cartwright reiterate the importance of context in their discussion of icons. The text states: “For whom is this image iconic and for whom is it not?” (42). Translated, the following might read true: what is important for one is not for another; another person’s trash (so to speak) is another’s treasure. The authors use the various images to communicate this idea of context as it relates to culture, history and background. The chapter’s final examples confirm the statements the authors end with. They write: “These codes build on one another, incorporating these historical legacies of image codes at the same time that they rework, play off, and recode them. To interpret imagines is to examine the assumptions that we and others bring to them as different times and in different places and to decode the visual language that they ‘speak’” (46).

In their text, Document Design: A Guide for Technical Communicators, Kimball and Hawkins discuss certain theories and their applications to several of the themes projected in Practices of Looking. In Chapter 3 of Kimball and Hawkins’ text, the authors write: “In fact, our visual perception is so central to our personal experience that we often don’t think consciously about what we see” (39). This statement may suggest that instead of seeing a woman and her child as a symbol of a biological importance and passion or snapshot of historical influence (as discussed in Practices of Looking), viewers see only the image of a woman and her child, without additional context, because they simply are not looking. Viewers see only what their personal experiences allow them to see. This statement is then argued from the various viewpoints of neurophysiology, Gestalt theory and constructivism.

Kimball and Hawkins refer to the same “visual culture” that Sturken and Cartwright do in Chapter 1 of Practices of Looking. Kimball and Hawkins state: “These aspects of visual communication start with our visual perceptions, but they focus more fully on the connections we make between those perceptions and our culture… visual culture influences how we ascribe meaning to what we see” (54). These words directly correlate with those from Sturken and Cartwright; however, Kimball and Hawkins further the connection to include the relationship with the documents we use in our day-to-day lives.