Reading the Visual

Tony Schirato

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000257496
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Linguistique

From the body to the ever-present lens, the world is increasingly preoccupied with the visual. What exactly is the visual' and how can we interpret the multitude of images that bombard us every day? Reading the Visual takes as its starting point a tacit familiarity with the visual, and shows how we see even ordinary objects through the frameworks and filters of culture and personal experience. It explains how to analyse the mechanisms, conventions, contexts and uses of the visual in western cultures to make sense of visual objects of all kinds. Drawing on a range of theorists including John Berger, Foucault, Bourdieu and Crary, the authors outline our relationship to the visual, tracing changes to literacies, genres and pleasures affecting ways of seeing from the Enlightenment to the advent of virtual technology. Reading the Visual is an invaluable introduction to visual culture for readers across the humanities and social sciences. Eloquently written, admirably clear, passionately argued, Schirato and Webb have given us one of the best textbooks on the emergent field of visual culture. Smart, clear and relevant examples challenge readers to question their visual environments and become critics and creators themselves.' Professor Sean Cubitt, University of Waikato This is a splendid book. It is both intellectually sophisticated and written in an extremely accessible manner.' Professor Jim McGuigan, Loughborough University This book treats the interpretation and value of visual artefacts with depth, while remaining highly accessible. It is very readable: written in a lively and engaging style with examples that are refreshing and up-to-date.' Professor Guy Julier, Leeds Metropolitan University

1 reading the visual

introduction

I am driving along in a car in the country. As I drive, I am looking out the windows—straight ahead, to the right and left, through the rear-view mirror—at the sky, hills, bush, road and the other vehicles around me. I am moving along this road, and through this landscape, at speed—say, 80 kilometres an hour. Everything I see is seen at speed: I am moving past trees, meadows, cattle and slower vehicles; and faster vehicles are moving past me. Even though I am travelling at 80 kilometres an hour with my vision framed, and thus partially restricted, by the mirrors and windows of the car, I can still see and negotiate my environment (road, trees, road signs, other cars). I drive on the road, in the slower lane, seven car-lengths from the vehicle in front of me. I observe speed signs, and change lanes when I come across a slower car without causing any accidents.

Suddenly a kangaroo jumps out of the bush, and bounds across the road—a not unusual occurrence around here. I’m alarmed—I know from experience what damage a car can do to a kangaroo, and vice versa. I rapidly focus my attention on the kangaroo, taking in its speed, size, trajectory, distance from my vehicle, and the rate at which I am approaching it. In almost the same instant I break and swerve to the side (somehow I know there are no cars around me), and miss it. I drive on, more alert, occasionally scanning the bush ahead for more kangaroos. When I arrive at my destination (my parents’ house in the mountains, a place I have driven to many times), I have almost no recollection of the drive, apart from the incident with the kangaroo.

I have arrived at my destination, and I am taking a photograph of part of the house and the front part of the property (see Figure 1.1). I am taking the shot from the same level as the house but 20 metres to the side, and I am only framing part of the house (which includes the verandah, a typical rural feature) so I can include two sets of trees. The first set is located just in front of the house, and the trees are leafless; the second set is another 60 metres down the slope on which the house sits, and the trees are solid with foliage. The backdrop to the house and trees is a thick mist which has partly covered the lower trees, and seems to be moving towards the house.

Figure 1.1 A Lake, a Tree

I have a few things in mind which have led to this arrangement of the shot. I want to produce a sense of space (the house as one small part of a much larger property, which is one of the reasons I have included the second set of trees). I want to catch the property as it usually looks at this time of year. But I also want to emulate those landscape paintings and photographs which contextualise signs of human presence (the house) within the forces, power and rigours of nature (the trees and the enveloping mist). The leafless trees are situated at the centre, and take up almost half of the photograph, while the house is peripheral (and consequently relatively insignificant). My focus will be on the objects in the foreground (particularly the tree branches, and the way they tower over the house); the rest of the scene (the solid trees, the paddock, the mist) will be slightly blurred.

the activities of seeing

Planning and taking a photograph is, like many human activities, an intensely visual experience; so is driving a car, where we are constantly visualising and making sense of the space through which we are moving. There is one big difference, of course: driving a car is a relatively unreflective activity and even below the level of consciousness, while taking a photograph is usually conscious, deliberate and self-reflective. In other words, we usually pay a great deal of attention to what we are doing when we are photographing a scene; but when we are driving a car we are often doing so on automatic pilot, and only pay close attention to what is around us when we need to (for instance, when a kangaroo jumps out of the bush or when we are looking for a place to stop and have lunch).

This difference between the two activities—a difference of levels of attentiveness, among other things—is one of degree rather than of kind because, whether we are aware of it or not, in both instances we are making (that is, actively ‘bringing about’) the (visual) world around us. When driving a car, or arranging a photograph, we are not simply seeing and taking in everything that is available to our range of vision. The space I photographed contained an extraordinary, almost infinite, amount of detail that I simply didn’t see. There may have been rabbits, camouflaged and keeping still on the slope; birds blending into the branches of the trees; various plants and types of grass around the house; kangaroo dung by the lower trees; the front roof of the neighbour’s house poking through between the bare trees and my parents’ house; a small puddle created by a dripping tap, and many other details. Some of these things are more or less visible in the photograph, but the rest weren’t seen and haven’t been shown. Had I seen them, I might have changed the angle, distance, speed, frame and focus of my shot, and produced a different photograph (‘puddle outside the house’, ‘rabbits in the paddock’). But every act of looking and seeing is also an act of not seeing, even when we are being attentive.

This is true to an even greater extent with the act of driving a vehicle. It seems strange to suggest that I can be more attentive and reflective when taking a photograph, which is a relatively trivial activity with no serious consequences (about the worst result would be that my parents dislike the way the house is shown, or maybe I could get the focus wrong) than when driving a car, where one wrong move could cost me my life. But a lot of our visual activity in driving is more or less automatic: we see where we’re going and what is around us, but our attention is usually focused on only one or two spaces (the lane we’re driving in, the car in front of us). And even here our attention is often more general than specific. We make sure we’re driving within the lines that designate our lane, but we don’t usually look to see whether the lines are all the same length, or partly worn away; or notice the texture, condition or colour of the surface of the road (oil stains, small cracks, small tufts of grass, squashed cigarette packets). And the car in front of us is often seen in a very indistinct way. We might be aware of the distance between the two vehicles, or the speed, size and colour of the other car, but we rarely look at it in a detailed way, and might be hard pressed to recall its make, year of production, condition of the tyres, number of people riding in it, or their gender, age and skin colour.

There are other reasons why we might not pay as much attention when driving as when taking a photograph. The trip might be over several hundred kilometres, and take hours. We simply can’t look at things in a detailed and attentive way for that length of time, particularly when we’re moving at speed. And moreover, while there is a link in photography between attention and enjoyment (we have chosen to look at things, frame them and capture them on film), a car trip is more often a means to an end rather than an end in itself (I drive to get to work, to visit my parents, to go to a shopping plaza). In other words, it is in my interest to be attentive when driving only insofar as my or somebody else’s safety is concerned (watch to ensure that I’m not exceeding the speed limit, and that I’m travelling within my lane), for reasons of economy (I only have a limited amount of attention to give), practicality (I’m moving too quickly to take most things in), and in order to ensure that I achieve what I set out to do (get somewhere where I can see my parents, or take photographs, or go shopping).

seeing as reading

We have covered three main points so far. Firstly, when we see things we are actively engaging with our environment rather than simply reproducing everything within our line of sight. Secondly, every act of looking and seeing is also an act of not seeing—some things must remain invisible if we are to pay attention to other things in view. Thirdly, the extent to which we see, focus on and pay attention to the world around us (the three actions are inextricably linked) depends upon the specific context in which we find ourselves.

While the process of making and negotiating the visual (whether driving a car or taking a photograph) is always informed by the notions of attentiveness, selection and omission, and context, there are other issues which we need to consider, such as when we do focus on, attend to and see something, and why do we see things differently over time, or from other people?

Consider the first paragraph in Stephen Crane’s short story ‘The Open Boat’, which is about the experience of four men who take refuge in a rowboat after their steamer has sunk:

None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept towards them. The waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the color of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. (Crane 1960: 140)

The men in the boat don’t know or see the sky because their attention is focused on something of more immediate interest: the waves that threaten to overturn or smash their boat, and take their lives. They see the waves in great detail: they are ‘the hue of slate’, with foaming tops, and they seem sharp and threatening like rocks—that is, the waves are the same colour (and, by extension, hardness) of slate, and as the boat comes down upon the waves it appears to be landing on sharp, hard rocks.

Now we could say that the psychological state of the men in this extreme condition has produced an effect so that the waves have become, in their minds, like rocks. But, as we saw with our previous examples of driving and photography, every act of perception takes place within a context that orients, influences or transforms what we see. Observing a kangaroo from the balcony of a café at a nature park produces a very different sight from what we experienced when we swerved to avoid one on the road. Watching the approaching mists when we are deep in the bush with a broken ankle and unsure of our way home is a very different experience from that of treating the mist artistically, as an aspect of a photograph that depicts natural forces. And when watching a storm from the safety of a cliff we may see the slate-hued waves, and thrill to the drama and tension of the scene, but this does not equate with how the sea appears to Crane’s men in that open boat.

Every perception and meaning is the product of psychological, physiological and, above all, cultural contexts (I’m stressed, I’m not wearing my glasses, I’m lost, I’m an artist). In other words, the things we see aren’t simply ‘out there’ in any ideal or unmediated way; rather, we understand, evaluate and categorise—that is to say, see— things in terms of a set of resources that we take from our cultural contexts. It has long been accepted in what we call the human sciences and the humanities—particularly in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis and cultural theory—that we make sense of our world through the different meanings, ideas and categories available to us. And it is this situation of a culture more or less seeing through and for us, combined with the inflection or influence of different psychological and physiological states, and of-the-moment contexts, that produces what we see.

We can carry this insight further by suggesting that when we see we are, in effect, engaged in an act of reading (the visual). When we read a book we try to follow, consider and understand the material at hand (the words, the sentences, the story), and we end up making both meanings and connections between different meanings. In Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, for instance, we come to understand that Captain Nemo is keeping Professor Aronnax and his companions prisoners aboard the Nautilus, and that he is obsessive about not returning to land; we infer that Nemo has suffered some great psychological hurt or loss, and that he will never let them leave the giant submarine alive. We could say that the story of the book is about the relationship between two different sets of wills, and how this is played out (will the Nautilus destroy other ships? Will Aronnax and his friends thwart Nemo or escape?). But no two people will read the book in exactly the same way: some readers will see Nemo as a heartless murderer, while others will see him as rightfully enacting revenge on a world that robbed him of his wife and children, who were killed in a naval battle. The point is that the same book will be subject to different readings and interpretations precisely because people approach it from different backgrounds and perspectives.

There is another reason why the book will be subject to different readings: readers will want different things from it. A person with two hours to devote to a rollicking adventure will read it differently from someone studying the book for a school or university exam. Roland Barthes writes in The Pleasure of the Text that, when he has a story in front of him, ‘I read on, I skip, I look up, I dip in again’ (Barthes 1975: 12). And he refers to ‘two systems of reading: one goes straight to the articulation of the anecdote, it considers the extent of the text, ignores the play of language’—if I read Jules Verne, I go fast—while the other reading ‘weighs, it sticks to the text . . . [and] grasps at every point’ (Barthes 1975: 12).

These descriptions of different ways of reading a book could just as easily be applied to practices and ways of seeing. Barthes’ reference to his ‘skipping and dipping’ style of reading, for instance, pretty much sums up the orientation of the car driver who takes in the (visual) bare minimum, while the reader who ‘weighs things’ and closely examines the text is like the photographer carefully attending to and considering everything within the photographic frame.

When we read a book there is always a context to that act of reading; we might, for instance, try a book because we are familiar with the author’s other works or critical reputation, or simply because we wanted to pass the time with a ‘quick read’. But even if we had never heard of the book or the author, we have access to other signs, such as the title, which would help us categorise—and thus prepare for—what we were about to read. We would probably expect 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to be an adventure story rather than a scientific study of deep-sea life simply because we know that adventure stories have titles that refer to exotic, dangerous and far-away activities and places, while scientific works are much more specific about their subject, and the language used is usually less accessible (for instance, ‘Protandry and the Evolution of Environmentally-Mediated Sex Change: A Study of the Mollusc’ is clearly not an adventure story). Similarly, everything we look at and make sense of, whether it is a photograph or a set of objects within our purview, comes with a history of commentaries, meanings and annotations which disposes us to read it in a particular way.

the habitus and cultural literacies

The relationship between those forces which dispose us to categorise and see the world in certain ways, and the kinds of visual texts that subjects make, can be usefully explained through reference to two contexts—one taken directly, and the other extrapolated, from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The first is the habitus, and the second is cultural literacy. Bourdieu famously defines the habitus as ‘the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations . . . [which produce] practices’ (Bourdieu 1991: 78). In other words:

Habitus can be understood as a set of values and dispositions gained from our cultural history that stay with us across contexts (they are durable and transposable). These values and dispositions allow us to respond to cultural rules and contexts in a variety of ways (they allow for improvisations), but these responses are always determined—regulated—by where we have been in a culture. (Webb et al. 2002: 36–7)

Our cultural history and trajectories naturalise certain values and ideas, and effectively determine our worldview—that is, they predispose us to see and evaluate the world in certain ways. Central to this is what Bourdieu terms distinction: this is tied up with the notion of taste, which generally means having a refined, educated, sophisticated and aesthetic worldview, rather than simply seeing, evaluating and categorising things ‘naively’ (say, in terms of their use value). A good example of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series editor's foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Reading the visual
• 2 Visual technologies
• 3 Communication and the visual
• 4 Visual narratives
• 5 Visual art, visual culture
• 6 Normalising vision
• 7 Selling the visual
• 8 The media as spectacle
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Index