“We explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know never settled. The Surrealist painter Magritte commented on this always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams.”
“We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach. We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are. The reciprocal nature of vision is more fundamental than that of spoken dialogue. And often dialogue is an attempt to verbalize this- an attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, ‘you see things’, and an attempt to discover how ‘he sees things’. Images are a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from infinity of other possible sights. This is true even in the most casual family snapshot. The photographer’s way of seeing in reflected in his choice of subject. Yet, although every image embodies a way seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.”
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