Monday, January 24, 2011

History changes and challenges...

The way I see it, or at least understood from the textbook, is that important moments are those that change history forever. As I say history, I mean more than what is recorded in books. I am also including individual lives. The biggest example in the book was September 11. It is true that was the moment in history that defined out generation. If we go by the definition implied in this particular event, it means that we see important moments as those moments that unite communities, countries, nations and even the whole world. That union may be an union of fraternity or an union for vengeance. This was a moment that surely seemed to have touched every individual in the United States, and many others around the world. What made it important? We did. Our sorrow. Our fear. Our outrage. Our need for payback. Our unity. Our forgiveness. Our families. And many other things. The experience of James Nachtwey, in particular, demonstrates what a close viewer experienced that day. His experience is the one of someone that has experience the distress of. He was able to give us an insight and comparison between war and the even in Manhattan on that September day. This kind of events are important because they define generations, and we see them as things that impact, change, array, destroy, or compose the world as we knew it.
I also mentioned that history also refers to individuals. Susan Sontag is the one that describe it the best as she mentions that, " the wedding photograph has been as much part of the ceremony as the prescribed verbal formulas." In other words, the pictures of a wedding are as important as the vows themselves. I never thought about it, but it is true. Why? Because we want to keep a record of something that changes our history. No matter what it is. We take a million pictures during a trip, and then have the urge to make them public. It's our history. It's what is happening to us. It's how we are changing. I think that is how we see important moments. We measure them by how much our individual or global histories are affected by them.
My important moments are also pretty much defined by the paragraphs above. I think that what I consider important are those moments that I will remember for the rest of my life. Everything else is just an experience, but not quite a 'moment.' Important moments do not have to directly change my life. When the life of people I love change, I also consider them important moments. Now, there should be a rule for important moments to always have a good outcome. They would not have to be pleasurable like Fish Cheeks. She hated the moment, but she cherished it because of a good outcome. BUT, there is no such rule, and it never will. Moving on, a lot of people think that trying to capture a moment actually ruins the moment. I believe the opposite. I don't trust my mind. We are human, and it is in our nature to forget. I rather take some time away form the moment to have it with me the rest of my life.
Moving on again. Now to other topics. Challenging images. What is a challenging image? A challenging image is, for what I got from the book, those that make us think. The book says, "challenging images requires deliberate intellectual activity and highlights the contested nature of that thinking and writing." The way I understand is that they basically make our brain work. I don't think that it is much that challenging images do not agree with our believes. It is more than they represent a believe that we may not be acquainted with. I think that when I see something that makes me pay attention to it for more than 10 second, it is challenging. It has to do with the design, as the book suggests. I ask myself a lot of questions. I think the first one I ask is "Why would they create an image like that?" I just want to know why. Let say per se, that I see an image that offends the LDS Church. I am LDS, and before being offended I would ask myself why the would make something like that. What is the reasoning behind it? What is the purpose? Well, actually I may ask first if I agree or not. I am not sure which one I would ask first, but it would be one of them and the other one right after. I have to be honest. I am not sure what I would do after finding the answer to my two initial questions. I guess that if the image changed something in me, I may act upon, or not. Who knows? Give me a challenging image, and we can find out.

1 comment:

  1. I love that you talked about capturing the moment. I was watching some old home videos I took and was surprised by some of the things I captured on camera that I didn't remember exactly the same way.
    Also, I think I would ask myself if I agree with an image first and then why the image was created. This way I can maybe find an answer to the first question. If I agree with the image, why do I agree? Why was the image created? Why don't I agree? Is it because of the reason behind the creation? In this way, the image would be challenging to me because I would have to think about it on a deeper level.

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