This document discusses how images shape perceptions of power and politics through representation, interpretation, and ideology. It begins by distinguishing between passive seeing and active looking/interpretation. Several artworks are analyzed to demonstrate how images can convey denotative and connotative meanings influenced by cultural context. The role of photography in constructing myths of truth is also examined. The document suggests that images work ideologically to naturalize certain social values and can be used strategically for political persuasion and protest.

1. Images, Power and Politics
“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

2. Seeing vs. Looking
What is the difference?
• Seeing= process of observing, involuntary,
passive
• Looking=conscious consideration, active
interpretation

3. Looking vs. Seeing
Thomas Struth, Art Institute of Chicago II, Chicago, 1990
Chromogenic print mounted to acrylic

4. Seeing vs. Looking:
Looking Closer
Seeing: a process of observing and recognizing the world around us in
a somewhat arbitrary way as we go about our daily lives.
Looking: to actively make meaning of that world with a more involved
sense of purpose and direction. Through looking we negotiate social
relationships and meanings. Looking is a practice much like speaking,
writing or singing. Looking involves learning to interpret and it involves
relationships of power.

5. Role of Representation
Representation – “the use of language and
images to create meaning about the world
around us”
-Sturken and Cartwright,
Practices of Looking, p. 12

6. Role of Representation – “Seeing” a Still Life
Henri-Horace Roland de la Porte, Still Life , c. 1765, oil

7. Mimesis = imitation

8. Interpreting Visual Codes and Conventions
Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images (This is not a Pipe), 1928-29

9. Role of Representation – “Looking” at Still Life
Henri-Horace Roland de la Porte, Still Life , c. 1765,
oil
• Pictorial realism before
photography
• Contains symbolism
• Simple peasant life in
France during 18th
century
• Transience of earthly life
(fruit, flowers, drink will
be eaten or wither and
die)

10. The Myth of Photographic Truth

11. Roland Barthes – 20th Century French Theorist
Myths - the hidden cultural values and conventions through which meanings are
made to seem universal and given, even though in reality they are specific to certain
groups. (e.g. beauty & thinness)

12. Positivism – a philosophy that emerged in the mid-19th
century that holds that scientific knowledge is the only authentic
knowledge. What are some good examples of this belief today?
DNA
Surveillance photo of
suspected Boston
bombers

13. Word Presentations
Denotative vs. Connotative Meaning
Denotative – literal, explicit meaning
Connotative – meanings informed by the
cultural and historical contexts of the image
and the viewers’ knowledge of those
contexts and its personal significance to
them

14. Case Study: Denotative vs. Connotative
Robert Frank, Trolley Ride—New Orleans, 1955, gelatin silver print

16. Case Study: Denotative Meaning
Robert Frank, Trolley Ride—New Orleans, 1955,
gelatin silver print
• Black and white
photograph
• Medium value contrast
• City Trolley in New
Orleans, LA
• Viewed at mid-level
from side
• Three registers
(horizontal bands)
• Variety of passengers
seated
• Most engage
photographer’s gaze
• Appear separated by
race
• Children sit at center

17. Case Study: Connotative Meaning
Robert Frank, Trolley Ride—New Orleans, 1955,
gelatin silver print
• Racial segregation in
American South during
1950s
• Tension & heightened
emotional state
• On verge of change due
to civil rights activism
• Brown vs. Board of Ed
(1954) overturned
segregation in schools
• Montgomery bus boycott
1955-56 (Rosa Parks)
• Trolley as symbol for
passage of time or
movement toward change
• Children in the middle
may signify future
resolution of differences?

18. Images and Ideology

19. Ideology -
set of broad values
and beliefs through
which individuals live
out their complex
relations to a range
of social structures
(p. 21)
Barbara Kruger, Untitled
(Your Body is a
Battleground), 1989

20. Newsweek vs. Time depictions of O.J. Simpson, 1994

21. O.J. Simpson with Heismann Trophy, 1968

22. Case Study: “#If they Gunned Me Down”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/
13/us/if-they-gunned-me-down-protest-
on-twitter.
html?hp&action=click&pgt
ype=Homepage&version=Large
MediaHeadlineSum&module=ph
oto-spot-region&region=photo-spot&
WT.nav=photo-spot&_r=0
Michael Brown via Facebook

23. Art of Persuasion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7nrByig01Q

24. Norman Rockwell,
Freedom from Want, 1943
Oil on canvas

25. Vanessa Beecroft
White Madonna
with Twins
2006