Memories Of Things Unseen Summary

702 Words2 Pages

In “Memories of Things Unseen,” Teju Cole passes by Thomas Demand’s photo “Clearing” while entering a landscape exhibition at the FotoMuseum in Antwerp, Belgium. He notices the photo of the “forest”, but ignores it, concluding that it was just “another” (3) landscape photo. But after exploring the exhibition, Cole comes back to “Clearing” and, after reading the caption, realizes that the photo didn’t picture a forest at all, but instead a model of a forest made by Demand himself. He acknowledges Demand’s laborious endeavor to construct the model, but found himself more intrigued by the model’s fate, how Demand ended up destroying the model. Through this experience and others similar to it, Cole reminds himself of the one-dimensionality of photos. …show more content…

For example, the introduction of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram has allowed people to share photos of daily activities online. Despite this, these photos are “not only unforgettable but inescapable” (5). Once these photos make their way onto the Internet, they remain there for eternity. This makes it difficult to take back a photo that you didn’t want to post in the first place. But once uploaded, people start to form different opinions about you and the way you act, dress, and maybe even sleep. In doing so, the viewer is left with this distorted and fragmented perspective on the moment and the person himself/ herself. So how should we interpret a photo? It’s not like the global population stop using their cameras for the rest of their lives. Jean Piaget, in his essay “Genetic Epistemology”, suggests that we should act upon it (38). Piaget believes that copying a model would only lead us into this “vicious circle” (38) in which we can’t determine if the “copy of the model is like the model or not” (38). In order for us to do that, we would need to know the model we plan to copy (38); however, that will be impossible considering the fact that we don’t know anything about the model to begin with. Even if we do create a copy, it can never replace the original model. The copy didn’t exist at the time in which the original model was created, nor did

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of Joy Williams' Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp

    899 Words  | 2 Pages

    She starts by bringing a pessimistic view to photographs of nature, by describing what may or may not lie just outside the boundaries of the picture. Mockingly she leads the reader to assume that there are no real nature photos left in the world, but rather only digitaly enhanced photos of nature wit...

    Read More

  • One Hundred Lavish Months Of Bushwhack Analysis

    567 Words  | 2 Pages

    Florian Maier-Aichen is a landscape photographer and drawer.With the computer he is able to alter photographs and make them a piece of artwork that not only pleases his thoughts, but also makes a statement.Since he takes real life images of a landscape and then constructs them in different modes that satisfy him , those images aren’t reality anymore.In Blum & Poe you can observe the strange colors he added to enrich myth-making.He fantasizes landscapes, making them open ended

    Read More

  • Unseen Realities: Sewage Work and Health Risks

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    Having such an image before our eyes, often we fail to recognize the message it is trying to display from a certain point of view. Through Clark’s statement, it is evident that a photograph holds a graphic message, which mirrors the representation of our way of thinking with the world sights, which therefore engages other

    Read More

  • In The Magic Of The Mind Summary

    75 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the magic of the mind author Dr. Elizabeth loftus explains how a witness’s perception of an accident or crime is not always correct because people's memories are often imperfect. “Are we aware of our minds distortions of our past experiences? In most cases, the answer is no.” our minds can change the way we remember what we have seen or heard without realizing it uncertain witnesses “often identify the person who best matches recollection

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of On Photography By Susan Sontag

    640 Words  | 2 Pages

    Susan Sontag once wrote, “To collect photographs is to collect the world.” In her article entitled “On Photography,” she overviews the nature of photography and its relation to people using it. Sontag discusses photography’s ability to realistically capture the past rather than an interpretation of it, acting as mementos that become immortal. Continuing on to argue the authenticity of photography and how its view points have shifted from art into a social rite.With the use of rhetorical devices, Sontag scrutinizes the characteristics of photography and its effects on surrounding affairs; throughout this article Sontag reiterates the social rites, immortality and authenticity of photographs, and the act of photography becoming voyeuristic. With the use of the rhetorical devices pathos, appeal of emotion, ethos, appeal to ethics and credibility, and logos, appeal to logic, Sontag successfully persuades the audience to connect and agree with her views.

    Read More

  • Way of Seeing, by John Berger and Susan Bordo’s Beauty (Re)discover The Male Body

    969 Words  | 2 Pages

    People tend to views an image based on how society say it should be they tend to interpret the image on those assumption, but never their own assumptions. Susan Bordo and John Berger writes’ an argumentative essay in relation to how viewing images have an effect on the way we interpret images. Moreover, these arguments come into union to show what society plants into our minds acts itself out when viewing pictures. Both Susan Bordo and John Berger shows that based on assumptions this is what causes us to perceive an image in a certain way. Learning assumption plays into our everyday lives and both authors bring them into reality.

    Read More

  • Life, Love and Death: The work of Adam Fuss

    2556 Words  | 6 Pages

    The role of photography is questioned; he asks, what about photography makes it a valid medium? We read about the operator (the photographer), spectrum (the subject) and spectator (the viewer), also about the stimulus (what we see in the photograph) and the punctum (the unclassifiable, the thing that makes the photograph important to the viewer). According to Barthes, the photograph is an adventure for the viewer, but it is ultimately death, the recording of something that will be dead after the picture is taken. This idea is the main focus of Barthes’ writing, the photograph “that-has-been”, in Latin “interfuit: what I see has been here, in this place which extends between infinity and the subject; it has been here, and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely, irrefutably present, and yet already deferred” (Barthes, 76).... ...

    Read More

  • Whether Photography Limits Understanding

    939 Words  | 2 Pages

    Photography is defined at the art or practice of taking and processing photographs. To understand photography is having insight or good judgment to know how to take the picture, but also edit it if need be. Does photography limit our understanding of the world? What some people haven’t realized is that photography is all around us, whether it is in the person’s mind to see it or not. While we see photography throughout our daily routine, people dismiss the small types of photography and focus on the bigger sceneries like other countries beautiful cities and landscapes. It’s true that in this day and age, most photographs we see have been altered in some way. When photographers use Photoshop to edit our photos, we use many different ways to make that image appealing to the eye. Although, photographers unless told to do so will not change an image into something totally absurd that takes away from being astatically pleasing. Images are a gateway to the insight of the rest of the world’s cultures landscapes, and architecture, and photography is the key aspect to it. Photography is a one way to see the world, but it is better if you go and travel around the world to see it. In order to see if photography actually limits our understanding, we have to first look at the positive side of photography.

    Read More

  • Artist's Statement

    328 Words  | 1 Pages

    A picture is more than just a piece of time captured within a light-sensitive emulsion, it is an experience one has whose story is told through an enchanting image. I photograph the world in the ways I see it. Every curious angle, vibrant color, and abnormal subject makes me think, and want to spark someone else’s thought process. The photographs in this work were not chosen by me, but by the reactions each image received when looked at. If a photo was merely glanced at or given a casual compliment, then I didn’t feel it was strong enough a work, but if one was to stop somebody, and be studied in curiosity, or question, then the picture was right to be chosen.

    Read More

  • Susan Sontag On Photography Essay

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    I believe that in able to see the world we should photograph life at a certain moment in time so we can capture reality, and able to look back at it. Susan Sontag expresses, “Although there is a sense which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are” (Sontag 6). Interpreting this quote can go a different way such as, that the photographer is capturing the world by the lenses, not the eyes. I believe that if we’re experiencing the world through the lenses, or rather

    Read More

  • My First Memory- Personal Narrative

    1627 Words  | 4 Pages

    My First Memory- Personal Narrative I’ve had many memories during my lifetime, many good, and some bad. My

    Read More

  • Digital media is changing the creativity of photography

    1097 Words  | 3 Pages

    when sharing the photos has risen to the new level in a world of photography. It weakens the

    Read More

  • Social Media And Our Perception Of Others

    1525 Words  | 4 Pages

    Every day we meet a lot of people have seen their behavior, listen to what they say, think about them, try to understand them. We feel that we not only see what color eyes and hair of a person, tall or not, thin or full, but also sad to him or fun, smart or stupid it, solid or not and so on. Over the past decade, social media has seen growth to the point where it is reflects in our daily lives and even the lives of those who choose not to use it. Anywhere we go online, there are always buttons to click so that you can share something on Facebook or pin it to your Pinterest account.

    Read More

  • Photography: A False Lens on Reality

    696 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Sontag’s On Photography, she claims photography limits our understanding of the world. Though Sontag acknowledges “photographs fill in blanks in our mental pictures”, she believes “the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses.” She argues photographs offer merely “a semblance of knowledge” on the real world.

    Read More

  • Photography Is The Main Source Of Communication

    1249 Words  | 3 Pages

    Photography has created an outlet for the masses to story tell. It has a way of speaking without words like most art forms and is a manner of expression in itself. To eradicate photography from humans would be equivalent to taking away a limb from humankind. Our society has grown an immense amount of dependency on it. Photography has become almost a daily menial task such as brushing your teeth; where we must take pictures of the things we deem important or equally unimportant, even more so with the invention of social media outlets such as Instagram and Snapchat, where photography is the main source of communication between people who use them. Susan Sontag offers the basis of what taking pictures can undertake in both our daily lives and moments that are not part of our daily lives, such as travel. Traveling to places where one is not accustomed can flare pent up anxiety. A way to subdue that anxiety could be through taking pictures, since it’s the only factor that we have total control over in a space where we don’t have much, or, any control of our surrounding environment. On the other hand, taking photos can also be a tool of power in the same sense as it allows for it to be a defense against anxiety. With the camera in our hands, we have the power to decide who, what, where, when, and why we take a picture. This in turn also gives the person who took the picture power over those who later analyze the photos, letting them decide the meaning of the photo individually, despite the intended or true meaning.

    Read More

More about Memories Of Things Unseen Summary

Open Document