Picture Post 55: Making Assumptions

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Martin Cohen

A Twitter friend of mine posted this image with the comment: “Believe in your limitations”.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he explained that he was being “quietly subversive” which I took to meaning gently mocking religious iconography. That aside, though, I think the image does illustrate something important about the way our minds process images. The traffic lights are not, in fact, the Buddha's eyes, yet the impression that they might be is so compelling that it makes us re-evaluate the Buddha himself.

I say ‘himself’, as Buddhas are traditionally male, indeed in some cultures being female is formally an inferior state and an obstacle to following the Buddhist philosophy. Of course, being male or female might not actually have any implications for the ability to transcend this world and reach ‘nirvana’ – yet for centuries such quick assumptions have prevailed.

Which brings me back to this image, because it illustrates nicely the way that we link things that in reality are completely unconnected, due to them fitting a strongly preconceived ‘pattern’. Such assumptions are not necessarily good or bad. But perhaps we should be on guard against them. Which maybe fits with my friend‘s cryptic comment after all.

Picture Post #53 The Courage to Stand Alone

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Tessa den Uyl

Florence Airport, January 2020

How we perceive images depends on how much we ‘cut out’ of them, or ‘cut in’ to them. When things get isolated in an image, the reading we attribute to it, changes. Still, we may want to make a distinction between an image that has a so-called ‘life of its own’ and images that purely illustrate. What is the difference?

In these current weeks, in regard to the quarantine of the COVID-19 virus, we can clearly see that the interpretation of images depends on what our mind perpetuates. We read images in regard to a situation and laugh, cry, or skip intrepidly to the next one. They serve as a momentum to a specific state of mind.

The above image of the lonely girl with a suitcase at a big airport might illustrate many situations. If we would write COVID-19 below the photo, we would grasp it. Alike the slogan: stop child-abuse, or ‘we do not leave anyone behind’, serving as a slogan for an air company. The picture of the little girl is therefore adapting to our purposes.

If we see and understand solely what we want to see, do we mostly fail to see, or understand? Maybe, for pictures and videos whose purposes cannot be exchanged, are rare. With a vast cybernetic landscape to attain to, how come the illustrative production is so high, while images that take a life of their own seem to lack?

Then are we ourselves merely illustrative, rather than unique to situations?