We learn the language of the visual world through our experience with it. The power of the visual form is pervasive: cultivated and conditions by a million moments.
Ours is a visual culture -- one which transcends the boundaries of nations, religions, and political systems.
How is it possible, then, to make sense of the relentless stream of the visual in order to understand the cultural, political and social effects of media images on society and in the world?
The word “idea” is derived from the Greek language meaning “to see.” As we shall discover, ideas and images are closely linked to the ways in which our minds organize, conceptualize and categorize experiences through the senses. In her book, The Burden of Visual Truth, Julianne H. Newton (2001) explains:
“On one level, an image can be the physical likeness of an observed person, meaning the material qualities of a human face and body that reflect light onto a recording substance...An image also can refer to the psychological likeness of the observed, to the usually unseen interior of a human being, what is described as the ‘real self,’ the ‘unmasked self,’ a ‘side rarely seen by others,’ or a mood or state of mind that communicates a psychological attribute of an individual through an externally recorded form” (p. 37).
Although we may think of an image as a likeness of a material object that is visually represented, there is much more going on here than meets the eye.
As constructions of social reality, images we consume through media––print, television, film, or the web––are presented within a persuasive matrix that is part verbal, graphic, optical, as well as perceptual.
Now the words -- imagine, image, and imagination -- come to mind as they are tied to the formation of our collective identity and memory. Even when we are provided an image of a jet crashing into a skyscraper we are still required to complete the scene, imagine, or construct a mental narrative through our imagination of what comes next, in this case death and destruction. The imagination is an active part of cognition and sometimes I think we often take it for granted.
We become dependent upon a collective social stock of knowledge, and the mind’s eye creates what is constructed from personal experience.
It is hopeless to imagine what death looks like when you are so far removed from the reality of daily events. Sometimes death appears real only when it becomes relevant to my own existence, and somehow I could place myself on board a skyjacked airliner or in one of the buildings that collapsed after the crash. I am uncomfortable with the idea that this event shocks me more than others I read in the newspaper or see on television.
Today, the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib seem magnified in the mind’s eye. All of these events are horrific and symbolic, but it is the imagination that creates the most primal desires and fears.
It is the last week of January 1991; the bombing of Iraq is in full swing.
An elderly woman, back bent in a slow curving arch, shuffles towards the shrine. She is very old; her eyes are fixed upon the ground in front of her. She moves haltingly with the help of a cane and rests every few paces.
The common person here is transformed into an icon of hope, but there is more. There is an image of Christ gazing up toward heaven. Upon his head is a crown of thorns. Below the image, cut out pictures of soldiers dressed in Navy blues, Army greens, and desert camouflage reveal smiling, dancing eyes. Each image represents not only a singular petition for help and safety, but also a collective prayer.
Pictures of martyrs and Marines cling to cold limestone with masking tape. Pictures hung in memorial to the dead and dying, the lost and the lonely. The face of a fallen Latino gang member stares out innocently next to another image of a Persian Gulf War veteran. A young boy is diagnosed with a rare incurable form of cancer. His eyes follow us through time.
We cannot rest on a single image, but are intoxicated by a virtual montage of humanity; a tableau vivant of lost souls. Hundreds of pictures, some with writing scrawled across the bottom, are arranged around a statue of the Virgin Mary. Candles burn; time stands still.
This is what is meant in being a visual communicator – the drive to speak of our fears, dreams, realities, and hopes through images and emotions.