Christine Rosen The Image Culture Analysis

On a constant, nearly continuous basis, we are bombarded with images of all sorts. We have become a society whose behaviors are motivated by the need for over-the-top visual representations of ideas that many can no longer be comprehended in the traditional method. As a result, images have replaced the written word; raw emotional responses rather than comprehensive understanding being the main target for proponents of business and regulation. Whether a painting or a drawing, or any form of artwork in that matter, our intent in modern day society for the artwork usually has nothing to do with the intent of the artist. This being said, how is our society or any society in general supposed to know what the artist’s intent is without ever being
Instead of challenging or using images as a reference to our comprehensive learning or cognitive thinking, we use images to serve as reminders or visual representations of things we come across in everyday life. As a result, those artists who have created images, paintings, etc. are being put on the back burner and their work doesn’t get the credibility or recognition that it should, because we are so hung on the idea of simple visual representations. In the beginning of an article written by Christine Rosen The Image Culture accounts for visual pictures and images during hurricane Katrina and how our society interpreted the images. As Rosen expresses, “The world was offered, in a negligible space of time, both God’s-eye and man’s-eye views of a devastated region. Within days, as pictures of the squalor at the Louisiana Superdome and photographs of dead bodies abandoned in downtown streets emerged, we confronted our inability to cope with the immediate chaos, destruction, and desperation the storm had caused. These images brutally drove home the realization of just how unprepared the U.S. was to cope with such a disaster.” What Rosen is trying to get across was that in a time of desperation and a time of mourning, our society used visual images of dead bodies and brush and associated it emotion. Rosen tries to get across that we are constantly using images as a
Our society, views images as something to portray emotional and feeling. Although it is okay to initially view something and associating it with some sort of emotion, all art has a comprehensive meaning and something deeper than what is initially there. Being more precise and analyzing things with a different thinking process than we usually use will help our society advance as a whole in terms of our cognitive thinking. “As a result, the same image can be perceived in alternate ways by people at the same time and can also be valued differently over time. Images travel across time and space and can be interpreted many ways in various cultures at different times, too. Thus, when we analyze an image, historians pay close attention to the image itself, the context within which it was created, and to the many different ways that image may have been understood over time” (Bierman 1). Irene Bierman in her essay Material Cultures, especially in the text quoted above talks about how our view of images changes and is altered based on our culture and background. Bierman also describes how not all people are not going to view an image the exact same way as someone else. This is simply because of individual’s background. This backs up my claim because an artists intent of an image is not going to be viewed and accepted by everyone else. In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, he says, “Soon after we can