Week 1.3 Use of Images Part 2

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.

[Music].
(University of London International Programmes)

(The Camera Never Lies - The Use of Images - Part 2)

[Dr Emmett Sullivan] Now I mentioned earlier that as part of our course doing history

we'd consider aspects of the built environment.

So as well as images and photographs of
different types, we can also start

thinking about considering buildings,
monuments, memorials.

Anyone who spent time walking along the
Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.,

it's very striking, it's very somber.

And is of a very different nature to many of the other memorials

that you will see in and around Washington,

particularly the more recent Second World War memorial,

which might be taken more of a celebration.

So, we can also make judgments about the nature of events

by the way that they are memorialized, and the way that they are depicted through time.

Now, one consideration is how certain images become recurring.

And what I have here is - and if you'll forgive me a second -

is the Eugene Delacroix' portrait or picture of Liberty leading the line, so to speak.

This comes from the French Revolution,

it's painted nearly 40 years after the event and very clearly embodies the idea

that everyone is involved in the Revolution, including this stylized view of Truth and Justice

through the body of a woman holding the French flag

And something that will be familiar to millions upon million of tourists into New York,

which is the statue of Liberty.

Again, a gift on the 100 years of independence of the United States

and another embodiment, through the female form of Truth and Justice and Liberty.

Now those come from two Western traditions

and are celebrating revolution and in a positive way.

Let's consider something that happened in 1989

and is, again, an image that looks reasonably innocuous at this point in time.

This is the Goddess of Democracy.

This is built by students, in China, in 1989, in Tiananmen Square.

Now from what was intended as a peaceful protest

we don't think so much of this particular image,

although we can see some lineage and some continuation of the general themes

of the purer forms of society coming in a non male package so to speak. /////

It's a slightly odd way of putting it but just consider it in those terms.

Yet the photographer that took this photograph is much more famous for taking this one.

And this can be taken several days apart.

But this an image of oppression, this is an image of courage

and this is an image of determination, hope.

In the fir, in the face of might beyond understanding.

So here we have an issue where it doesn't take too long for one theme of linking different images through history

to become immediately changed into something else.

Same photographer, same event, very, very different resonance.

(University of London International Programmes)