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October 05, 2005
Annie Dillard's "Seeing"
Despite the flexibility with which the two words "seeing" and "looking" are interchanged, the two have very different meanings when it comes to viewing images. In her essay, "Seeing," Annie Dillard addresses these difference through the following quote:
"The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness: you raise your sights: you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance. 'Launch into the deep,' says Jacques Ellul, 'and you shall see'" (pg. 103).
Seeing is something that we cannot help but do. From the moment one opens their eyes when they wake, until the moment they close them to sleep, they are seeing everything that is around them. We do not choose what we see, but rather go about simply happening to see other people, places, objects, etc. Looking is different in that we choose what it is we look at. Looking involves a conscious process of interpreting and finding meaning in something that we merely see.
In our world today we are constantly bombarded with images that are meant for us to not just see, but really look at. When we view specific advertisements, we do not merely acknowledge the syntactical elements of the image, such as the shapes, lines, colors, etc., but instead we relate semantic meanings to the advertisement and form some sort of idea about the product being advertised, ultimately helping advertisters accomplish exactly what they set out to do.
Annie Dillard suggests that we not look at the "ceaseless flow of trivia and trash" that we are constantly exposed to. We must see those things, but waste little time and effort on their existence. We should gaze "beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest puerly," or in other words we must remember the fact that images, which are just blobs of color, should not invoke any deeper meaning into our minds. It is the social constructionist approach in us all, or the tendency to make meaning our of everything we merely see, that makes it almost impossible for us to see images, but not look.
Posted by lcissullivan at October 5, 2005 04:19 PM
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