The power of an image

We are constantly surrounded by shapes, colors, textures, moods... Images are everywhere, but we sort them out unconsciously. We can either overlook them, look away, or stare at them. Either way, an image creates emotion in the viewer, whether it be positive or negative. 

We often underestimate the power of images, when in reality, images are so powerful that they can move us, hurt us, manipulate us, or even trigger crucial changes in us. 

If not for images, nothing would be the same. The world would make no sense.
I remember, when I was a child, I fell in love with photography of all mediums. A photograph is something else. It is a testimony of the past, a fleeting moment forever captured on a small sheet of paper. 

A photograph can bring back a memory, freeze a moment in time, remind us of people we once loved, of ones we lost, but also remind us of the person we once were, of our past. 

"Robert Barthes once wrote that photographs always indicate a kind of mortality evoking death in the moments in which they seem to stop time." I think he is right, that photographs can be associated not only to the past, but also to death. There is death in every picture we take, because the just when we're done taking the picture, the moment has already died. Time flies, but photography, it freezes time. I hate taking pictures of moments when am extremely happy, because I know that the picture will look nothing like reality, and because it will alter the ideal memory I might have of this particular event. It will be the testimony of its death. 

     Louis Daguerre - Boulevard du Temple (Paris 1838)

Look at the image above. It's a photograph of a Parisian boulevard taken in 1838 by Louis-Jacques Daguerre. Isn't there something weird that strikes us in this picture? Look closer. There are only two people in it. Two people in Paris, how could that be? 

The photograph is considered to be the first photograph to ever depict people. And that is because at the time, the photographer had to expose the camera to long shutter speeds. It took nearly 20 minutes to take this picture. In 20 minutes, thousands of people came and left, but they didn't stay long enough to even exist in the photograph. But there was this one man who decided he wanted to have his shoes shined, and that is how he made it into history. Him and the shoe shiner. 

I had a teacher once, who questioned us about time times and times again. He told us this one story that I can still remember: once, he was walking in a mall at a late hour, and there were these shop mannequins in the empty stores and he thought to himself that perhaps these mannequins had a life of their own too. Maybe we're just like the people in the Daguerre photograph. Maybe we live in a faster world, and we move so fast that they don't see us, that we don't exist, and that they live in a parallel world that's so slow that we can never see them move. Of course, this was just a reflexion. None of it exists, but nevertheless, I like the story. 

According to Barthes again, an image has two levels of meaning, a denotative level and a connotative level. Everything that is obvious in the image is denotative, and as we go deeper in our interpretation of it and start analyzing the context and the elements that constitute it, it's the connotative meaning that we uncover. 

Also according to Barthes, there are signs that we can all recognize and associate to feelings or brands. There's the signifier, and the signified. A smiley face for example is the signifier and joy is what is signifies. 

                                                                       Jeff Koons - Hanging Heart (2006) (9 feet tall)

This piece entitles "Hanging Heart" by contemporary artist Jeff Koons, is one of my favourite art pieces ever. On November 14, 2007, it was sold at Sotheby's New York for $23.6 million becoming, at the time, the most expensive piece by a living artist ever auctioned. At a first glance, what do we see? We see a symbol that we all recognize as being a heart. Heart here is the signifier, and love is what is usually signifies. And that is just the denotative meaning of this stainless steel sculpture/installation. It was exposed in a long hallway. We can see the reflection of the door in the heart. So one would stand at a distance and look at this enormous but yet cold heart. A heart is intended to be warm, to signify life and love. This heart is made of stainless steel. It is cold. It is huge, but hanging on a ribbon. The ribbon makes it look like a gift. Someone offering their heart, probably their love to whomever would accept it. So you enter the hallway and you look at the heart expecting to feel warm and happy, but all you see is a deformed reflexion of yourself in it. And the reflexion is so small it makes you wonder. Perhaps this heart is your heart, my heart and everybody's heart in the 21st century. It is cold, enormous, untouched. Not a trace. Mirror clear. And everyone who happens to pass by this very heart, would not dig deep enough to touch it, but only pass by it, leaving no trace of ever being there. At the time, there would be the reflexion, but the heart is so big, and we are so selfish that we can not bear to see ourselves so small, and we just walk away from it. What we now call love is a fleeting feeling, that comes and goes, but doesn't linger long enough to leave a trace. Love has an expiry date. And the heart is still in its box (the ribbon is still there) untouched by true genuine feelings. There is no time. Everything is fast today. Even love. Or the lack of it. 

     Steve Mc Curry - Afghan Girl (National Geographic 1986)

Yes images are powerful, and yes, they can have deeper underlying meanings like my interpretation of the Hanging Heart piece by british artist Jeff Koons. But sometimes, there's no need to look further for explanation or meanings. Sometimes, an image speaks for itself, and is so powerful that it becomes an icon. The image above is the photograph of an Afghan Girl in the Pakistani camps taken in 1986 by photographer Steve Mc Curry. When he took the picture, he thought it would be one like many others. But this photograph is so powerful. The green eyes of this little girl are full of anger and fear. You can sense the sufferings of her people in her expression. And it's this very expression in the girl's eyes that made it an icon. You could see it on tshirts, mugs, posters, tv, magazines, everywhere, the irony being that this girl was never aware of having ever had her photograph published. Unbeknownst to her, she became an icon. No one can look at her photograph and not feel a thing. It is one of those pictures that move us to the core.

In this case, photography was depicting the truth, but is it always a 100% reliable? The photography myth is, to me, a reality. Not before, not ever, has a picture shown the entire truth. Just like documentaries are less reliable than movies because people tend to think that they are depicting the whole truth when they are just showing the director's perspective and version of the truth. A documentary can never be entirely objective, because as long as a person is making it, he/she is being subjective. At least, when we go watch movies, we know they're just fictions.