Week 1.2 Use of Images (pt. 1)

From the description of Week 1 of The Camera Never Lies:
Learning Outcomes (Week 1)
On completing this week of work, you should be able to:
1. Understand the broad objectives of the course, and its structure;
2. Begin thinking about your own reactions to images in a modern and historical context; and
3. Consider more critically the images you see in the modern media.

[Background music starts]
(University of London International Programmes)

(The Camera Never Lies - The Use of Images)

[Dr Emmett Sullivan] Clearly the skills which are required to interpret a photograph or a film

are not bespoke purely to those two visual mediums.

And in fact it has been a part of a broader canvas, if you forgive the pun, of historical resarch

to look at images and the importance of images over time.

We can gain a great deal from seeing what was represented to a culture or society

and how that in itself reflected on their opinions.

You can get it through maps, pictures, drawings, and the built environment.

Now consider the importance of the portrait, the painted portrait.

Very staged, looking directly at the object,

the subject itself to be surrounded by belongings or in a particular setting,

which is significant to the person concerned.

That will allow in an individual to make a statement through the way that they're painted,

but also the historian to go back and interrogate that for those meanings,

and to help shed some light on their status and their perspective in society.

Or consider cartoons.

Being able to take the the mickey, make fun of politicians of the time, to satirize them,

to make comment about their status beyond simply a deconstruction of their speeches,

their debates or their law-making.

All of this has been used widely by historians

and will be areas of interpretation which are familiar to the public.

And its true in the 20th century as much as any other time.

We use images from paintings and other representations

to take significance from a particular image or moment.

When we come to any image, there is slightly a concern about what we are seeing.

If it's painted, we know that it's posed, we know that it's been taken over time.

One of the questions that's been put forward about the use of photographs as historical record

is what happened the millisection before?

What happened the millisecond after?

What's happened to the left and the right, to above and below the frame?

We are having captured one moment historically.

And to use a slightly flippant example,

if you go back to Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind,

midway through the discussion it's raised: if there are so many millions of photographs taken,

why have none ever shown a UFO?

Now I know that's a slightly ridiculous and fictitious example, but the principle applies.

If you look at the now, the 21st Century,

the number of images which are taken - CCTV, mobile phones, etc. etc. -

yet key incidents in history are never recorded in that manner.

So, we need to think about the prevalence of the image

against what that image actually means, at the time that it is taken.

And I'd just like you to just pause and think about images which have resonated for you,

Your own personal histories, your family,
etcetera.,

and the circumstances around those.

How much are you invested in an image

because of the memories that it triggers as much as what it actually shows?

(University of London International Programmes)