This document discusses images, power, and politics. It covers semiotics, representation, and the practices of looking at images. It asserts that how we look at and interpret images is shaped by implicit power relationships and can affect our understanding of objects and events. Images can be understood on multiple levels and in different ways. The document uses examples like photos by Weegee and of Emmett Till to illustrate how images represent meaning and influence perception. It discusses representation through language and visual signs, and how framing and context impact documentary photos. Overall, the document examines the political nature of images and their relationship to power.

1. images, power, &
politics
02/09/2011

2. to do
overview of images, power, and politics
semiotics
semiology
representation
discourse

3. practices of looking
• looking entails implicit relationships of power
• consciously and unconsciously
• these practices affect how we comprehend objects, people, or events and
subsequently how we interpret them
• images then can be understood from a number of levels and a number of
different ways
• these practices intersect and form the ways in which we look and
understand, the economy of looking
• within the world in which we live we are bombarded by a number of
different images which convey a wide range of emotions - these images can
mean a number of different things to a no of different people
• examples...

4. Weegee (Arthur Fellig)
Their First Murder
American, New York City, October 9, 1941; print, about 1950
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 11 in.
86.XM.4.6
The J. Paul Getty Museum

5. • "A woman relative cried...but neighborhood dead-end kids
enjoyed the show when a small-time racketeer was shot and
killed," wrote Weegee in the caption accompanying this
startling photograph in his 1945 publication Naked City. On
the facing page Weegee showed the bloody body lying in the
street.
Alternately laughing, staring in disbelief, or looking into the
camera to grasp their own momentary chance to be recorded,
the children who had witnessed this grisly scene form an
unsettling amalgam of human emotion and self-absorption.
Two women are among the group: one, whom Weegee
mentioned above, stands at the center, her face contorted with
anguished tears, her personal loss turned into public
spectacle.

6. Emmett Louis Till

7. representation
• ...to the use of language and images to create meaning
about the world around us
• we use words to understand, describe, and define the world
as we see it
• this happens through systems, i.e. oral and written language,
visual language, sign systems, etc
• languages’ follow a series of rules and conventions
• same can be said for visual objects, film, narratives there are
a number of rules which they follow
• 2 methods that are helpful here are semiotics and linguistics

8. Representation is the production of the meaning of the concepts in our
minds through language. It is the link between concepts and language
which enables us to refer to either the real world of objects, people or
events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and
events.

9. still life 1765

10. "Still Life with Dralas", by Marion Peck, is a limited edition, signed and numbered giclee print on archival, cotton rag, art pap

11. What one must paint is the image of resemblance—if thought is to
become visible in the world.
—Rene Magritte

12. Visual signs: are
called iconic signs
They have a
resemblance to
the object, person,
in their form, a
certain
resemblance to
the object, person
or event to which
they refer
So a photo of a
sheep reproduces
some of the
conditions of our
visual perception

13. Visual signs: are
called iconic signs
They have a
resemblance to
the object, person,
in their form, a
certain
resemblance to
the object, person
or event to which
they refer
So a photo of a
sheep reproduces
some of the
conditions of our
away from the flock (1994)
visual perception
iconic signs

14. S.H.E.E.P.
Written or spoken signs are indexical signs
They have no obvious relationship to the things in which they refer –
this makes their relationship arbitrary

15. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)

16. -
•
1) framing of the image: to make known, to confirm, or give testimony to others
•
2) construction of given moments through time and space speaking for those who cannot
speak for themselves – refugee flows, jail photographs – they speak for people – serving
as a form of social documentary – being able to influence the viewers perception plays
an integral role
•
representational legitimacy plays a key role in the validity of documentary photography
and this is based on what we just talked about first, witnessing of events and 2) the
modes of presentation: how they are used to illustrate a point in a newspaper, magazine
etc.

25. susan sontag: on
photography
• 1997 collection os essay in the NY Rev of Books from 1973-77
• discusses the role of photography in capitalist societies
• to photograph is to appropriate the object/subject of the image
• one is put in relation not only to the object itself but in relation to it - this
relationship causes alienation. people find themselves inhabiting the world of
printed images.
• argument: photography has perpetuated a attitude of anti-interventionism, i.e. war
photography
• as we cannot process the images we see or their recording so we lose the context
• here photography is understood as having a particular relationship with politics

28. Republican soldier