Camera is one of the useful tools which transfers us our images no matter the distance. Today with the help of  the images we can infer about what is happening around us or what happened before us and etc. Those images can influence our feelings and actions. In our regular life we take  many pictures on our phones to memorize them. So that looking at them we can remember pieces of our past life. In my case I have plenty of my kids’ pictures and each time when I look at them I travel back to those beautiful lovely days when my kids were babies. Those kinds of pictures give me a feeling of love, motivation and pushes me to do more accomplishment. If we look generally to the images, nowadays social media have worldwide tremendous impact to people. When people post some pictures, those pictures spread in several minutes all around the world. For the last several years people have started to post images of plastic materials which pollute the environment. People who had never thought about this problem before, started to think and worry about our world. In this way I think images have a big impact on people because it is a sort of message to the world. Sometimes we can not see some things but when we look at them from a different angle (in this case on the images) and then we can notice and realize the seriousness of the problem, the hidden message, love, feelings and many more things. 

Camera has added a great value to our lives because first of all, it makes us collect our special moments, and also it educates us about history and elaborates historic images’ details and that’s really important for viewers. Every image tells a story about itself, so they are a kind of languages especially painting image which is really hard to understand because when you see a painting image, you may visualize something that it might not be true and that’s really interesting. For example, I saw a series of paintings images from the Middle Ages. The majority of them are religious paintings which show that people were really faithful at that period of time. There are a lot of Mary and Jesus Christ paintings. In addition, there were statues of churches whose makers are not known. They didn’t put their names on them and this is a proof of their strong faith.

Goldsmith in his Shop

Furthermore, there is a painting called “A Goldsmith in his Shop” which exists right now in the MET museum. It indicates rich people in the Middle Ages which tells me that not all people at that time were farmers and priests. There were people who wore high-end clothes and lived in cities. In the painting, there is a man seems like he is a jeweler, and there are a man and a woman with him dressed upscale. Also, there is a mirror on the table which shows the buildings of the city.

Binta Ngom

John Berger emphasizes how seeing comes before words. In his book “Ways of Seeing” he says “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves”. We all feel a certain connection when we can relate to a message that someone else put out there. Giving us reassurance that we’re not alone. Images are used to as an artistic platform to bring awareness or send a message to the viewer. Thus making it a kind of language that can speak louder to us than most words can. Words are set in stone and super specific, but with a photograph, picture or illustration multiple interpretations can surface. Everyone has their own unique perspective, which can in some ways be more powerful. 

The photo below spoke to me because of the way I can automatically relate to it. In one way, I see it as an illustration of a woman looking in the mirror at her younger self, viewing her innocence and noticing how it has changed into who she is now. She looks like she’s been through a lot of pain and has given up, envying her younger self who hasn’t seen any of it yet. Sometimes I too wish I could go back in time to relive the easier life I had before  I had all these adult responsibilities. Although I don’t do drugs or self harm, she clearly has been doing in the illustration, she’s showing pain, which we all can relate to.

  After the invention of the camera, images have become a source of information and also some kind of language that works by manipulating the context in which the images are shown. An example could be when we’re watching tv and in between commercial breaks the broadcaster often shows ads to either promote a product or service or to convey a message, while watching the news I often see ads about the newest Iphone, these ads consist of various images and videos of the new device showing and providing information meticulously picked by the company Apple to try and incite its viewers to buy the new device, while doing these ads Apple is trying to convince its public about the device’s advantages and improvements, only showing what’s beneficial for the company and therefore manipulating the way they show only what they want you to see about their new device . This type of publicity fits with the ideas that Berger describes in episode one(#1) of ways of seeing, because in the episode Berger claims that images are often shown by the provide in ways which he could manipulate what he wants people to see and could be used to create some sort of manipulative pattern that could be used to make the viewer believe or change their perspective on a certain topic.

The contents of an image have changed after the invention of the camera. Camera movements and image availability alter the way we interpret the story and meaning of an image. The use of the camera today has made art like this easily accessible to the general public creating more possible meanings for a given image. The invention of the camera is used not just as a mechanism that manipulates the meaning of art externally but can be used internally as part of the image itself. Surrealism paintings often had a photographic likeness to them, which added a modernized feel.  Surrealism was a 20th-century movement in art and literature that used irrational imagery to evoke the unconscious mind. 

The Persistence of Memory is a 1931 surrealist painting by artist Salvador Dali. The four clocks look to be as they are melting while the white almost faded looking figure on the ground appears to be sleeping. The Persistence of Memory possibly represents the dream state. The clocks depict the passage of time in reality. The melting of the clocks and then ants on the clock furthest to the left represent times powerlessness in the dream state. Since time is something we deem very precious in the everyday world, the distortion of the clocks shown how irrelevant our conscious worries are to our unconscious mind.

ENG 101/0845

I have encountered a message that has been conveyed by an image and it was when my history teacher back in high school teaches us information about those historians that contributed to the world using images. At some point, by using an image, there is a possibility that the meaning or appearance of an image might change because it has been seen by a lot of people and we have different kinds of perspective so we understand things differently. But if we see images and paintings in its original concept, we might realize the differences between the original and the one used by the camera. In the original piece, you can see the uniqueness of art, you can see the thickness of the material used in that art. But in terms of using a camera rather than to see it with our own eyes, the meaning of an art change because we just lost the originality of it and you will certainly see a drawing that means a lot of insights came from different kinds of perspectives of people. 

For me, it fits with the idea of Berger because they mean the same perception, that you will know the real meaning of a painting if you will be able to see it with your own eyes or in reality. 

I think it brought us a realization that after camera was invented and much online stuff that popped up, it changes the world and it changes how we see things in different ways, I would say social media affects our lifestyle by seeing so many advertisements everywhere that we didn’t notice we are being addicted to it. Unlike before that, there weren’t cameras, people live in a society that writes their own stories with their own experiences and not influenced by social media. 

ENG 101: Blog Post #1

In Berger’s first Episode of Ways of Seeing, he touches on the use of cameras use to convey a conversation with its user yet took away a sense of truth, originality and personality from paintings and potentially real life. This piece aired back in the 70’s, the height of color television. I felt that his ideas towards cameras and their use was justified. From Advertisements, television, movies, magazines, to the news. Cameras brought images from around the world to bring about a new way of living and communicating. Society has embraced it so much that, in present day we are still surrounded by its images. We use the combination of words and imagery to give us our most basic of information and state it as fact. This new format of communication is easy to understand, you watch, and the assistance of words, music and imagery builds the scene for you.

The news is broken down to a mere 60-minute segments on a click of a button. Yes, we are more well informed and understand so much more about the world and people around us but with this grand invention comes an invitation of grand misuse. The news reports brutality in poverty-stricken areas alongside the celebrity puff pieces, molding its unknowing viewers to feel on the edge. To feel the need to remain informed out of the fear as opposed to knowledge. I have been asked personally so many times “is the Bronx that scary?” “Is the Bronx as dangerous as they say it is?” they ask me these things because rather than show the positives of the Bronx they will show images of crime, murder, drug use, homelessness and death.

The evidence of its impact even shows on your Google searches.

What isn’t being shown is the community trying to help one another in the community centers, the important landmarks and beautiful parades and art that flow throughout the Bronx.

The news finds a way to amplify the bad in a community struggling to survive without sharing its accomplishments, because good news means less views. I felt this topic and the images of the Bronx was closely related to Berger’s opinions back in the 70’s because even though cameras helped the world learn about each other , the use of imagery can be used to manipulate its viewer negatively about the world.