Thoughts on Images

In the last week, we've been reading a lot about the power of the image and how to best make use of it. Usually, it really kills me how much people analyze things. I get that feeling like when you say a word over and over again and eventually looses it's meaning. I sort of got that vibe from "Picturing Texts", but I was pleasantly surprised when I read "By the means of the visible". It managed to avoid making images into a dull textbook topic without giving up any intellectual value. So, if it would please the court, I would like to focus on that for this weeks entry.

I really liked Mr. Stephens' article. He delivers a truly unbiased opinion on both sides of the fence for images vs words. I was surprised that there was so much opposition to images in ancient times. I was well aware of the conflict and superstition that surrounded the invention of the camera, but I didn't realize how far back the fear of images reached. Some of it doesn't seem to make much sense, but then again, a lot of it does. I think the worries that people had about making images of god have come true. What do we think of when we imagine god? If you've seen Bruce Almighty, you may picture Morgan Freeman, but everyone else is likely to picture a kind old man with a white beard in a white robe. If god really exists, is that what god really looks like? Probably not. That's an image that people have invented for him and it's probably what the people of the old testament feared. God, the most holy and sacred of all things is being spread about with false images. Another fear is also coming true. He is becoming commonplace. By the spread of an image of him, people get used to seeing it. People become comfortable with it. He used to be a concept that was awe inspiring, but now that we can put a common image to him, he is something a bit less. We can look at him and compare him to worldly things, like Morgan Freeman.

Another fascinating thing that he said was that although we developed and progressed because we had sophisticated eyes capable of observing and analyzing thousands of different objects, plants and animals, we have reduced them to decoding a simple pattern of figures with similar color, shape and design places evenly on evenly spaces lines. Wow! We humans are certainly talented at doing the bare minimum! It astounds me that we couldn't come up with any more elegant method of communicating other than the word. Then again, we have, but they just haven't worked out. He discussed the failure of hieroglyphics's, but I was surprised that Japanese style of writing never came up. It was designed with the beauty of the image and the meaning of the character in mind. If you reach back to it's origins you can see that the characters for words like "dog" or "house" look extremely similar to an image of a dog or a house. It then slowly evolved further away from the image and closer to a simple symbol. I really think it deserved a mention in the piece due to the fact that it's similar to the egyptian writing, but also much more modern.

Well, that's about all I have to say about that. Till next time!