REPRODUCTION AND RESOURCES

Creative writing examples.

Whether they are taken candidly or professionally, all images are rich with meaning to both the audience and the image-producers. Photographers employ several techniques such as choosing specific subject matter, using composition, and creating context around an image to present a statement through visuals and guide audiences to the intended meanings of certain images. Audiences have a unique relationship to all of the pictures they view since each person has their own interpretation,secondary to the image-producer’s original encoded message. The meaning of images can be especially malleable when images are arranged in a cohesive body, as viewers’ understanding of individual images can change due to how the images collectively relate to each other. Demonstrating how pictures that may seem insignificant at first glance can actually uncover many truths about the human condition when they are arranged in a specific way and examined further, I have complied a total of three sets of photos that represent emotional pain, ambiguity, and mankind’s relationship to nature.

The first collection of images are mixed media or editorial photos which suggest violent acts preformed on the human body, thus symbolizing emotional pain. The first photo is a collage of a woman “beheaded” with a brown, blunt-shaped figure to imitate a weapon on top of a pink- and black-speckled pattern, representing blood spilling from her severed neck. The second image is a close up of a young girl’s face, with half of it teared from the page and filled with a flowery pattern, as if it were her exposed flesh. Next is a cut-out of two posed fashion models sliced up in such a way that the photo’s black background appear like daggers piercing into and through the sides of the models’ bodies. The last image indicates another mutilated woman, with only the lower half of an apparently expressionless woman’s face displayed beneath several black streaks of paint running across the length of the image.

The moody, desaturated coloring of these photos, paired with the female subjects’ jaded and emotionless looks is reminiscent of models in high-end fashion magazines who typically appear fashionably emotionally distant and uninvolved. The presentation of the subjects in this collection is in direct contrast to lower-end magazines ads which feature models expressing pleasure, amusement, and joy to rouse those same feelings in readers and make products more appealing to potential consumers. Ads with colorful imagery and cheery models communicate to buyers that the featured products are the temporary cure to unhappiness, or the key to feeling the very same way the elated models superficially do in said advertisements. One could argue that advertisers emphasize happiness in ads since people’s innate want to avoid emotional pain and even, subconsciously, our awareness of our own mortality is what drives us to buy inessential items, and distract from these uncomfortable feelings. Due to the violent imagery and use of visuals similar to that of exclusive fashion magazines, the images in this group go against the deceptively happy facade in many advertisements aimed at consumers and cause viewers to directly confront the grim realities they seek relief from. Rather than idealizing happiness through products and models as advertisements normally do, these images do the exact opposite by romanticizing and beautifying emotional pain to face and lessen viewers’ fear of accepting the emotional discomfort we feel.

The theme of ambiguity, or uncertainty, is shown in the second body of images. The first image in the group is of a woman’s leg, adorned with a sparkly high-heeled shoe and extended to the window of a wall box framed with vanity strips. Her bare leg leaves much to the imagination and could suggest a cropped, voyeuristic shot of the female dancer performing live. However, the turned-off vanity strip lights may hint that there is no show at all, and the seemingly sexy cropped image may actually be sparing viewers of the shocking sight of a passed-out performer instead. The second image is of a woman with her hands on the sides of her face and a view of the ocean covering the upper half of her face. Her hidden eyes make it challenging to discern the subject’s expression, which could easily be read as a conflicting variety of emotions. The woman may be distraught, at peace, irritated, or reflective, which makes the image read as a juxtaposition between a display of tranquility in the ocean and the anguish in the possibly-upset woman’s face. The last photo shows three people, with the person in the middle being held by the two people opposite of him. This snapshot could be of a perfectly innocent moment between three formally-dressed friends playing trust fall - or, more eerily, two people setting down an injured or dead person on the forest ground.

Any number of stories could be told with the unclear circumstances portrayed in these three photos. Such vagueness clouds our basic human instinct to read nonverbal cues, such as other people's facial expressions and body language, to make snap judgements of how safe we are in a situation. Even though we as viewers are not actually present in the photos, we may mentally respond to them according to what we see or think we see as if we were bystanders existing in the images. Creating an image with double or more meaning can draw the image's audience closer, as viewers naturally want to understand what they ought to absorb from it. However, we may feel lost or feel curious about the missing visual details, and thus begin to fill in the gaps by offering our own answers to clarify what we are seeing in an image. These photos may stir feelings of dissonance and uncertainty as there is a natural want for the brain to rationalize that which it is unable to process, or find a definite answer to.

Finally, the theme represented in the last set of photos is people’s relationship with nature. One image shows a train full of passengers, most of whom gaze away towards the windows, showing disinterest in the sight of the colorful pattern of flowers beyond the train windows. The passengers’ averted eyes mirror how jaded and disconnected most people are from nature, or how we oftentimes undervalue its beauty, power, and presence. The next two images are anthropomorphic subjects: one features a woman’s body with her head replaced with a cat’s, and the second is another woman with a betta fish for a body. These images may represent how humans are naturally animalistic in behavior, despite that we continually suppress our lower-natured tendencies as we advance in civilization. Another meaning is that while humanity differentiates itself from other animals due to having higher intelligence and consciousness compared to other animals, we are not superior at all and have more in common with other creatures than we like to think.

Next, a contrasting image of soldiers soaring from a war helicopter over a pink background and into a handful of flowers shows how we as people occasionally engage our primitive nature, especially through acts of war. This image also hints the massive self-destruction that mankind is capable of even as people and civilization evolve as a whole, and its contrast against the balanced softness and brutality of nature - which also experiences self-inflicted damage, yet is equipped to repair itself after. The final image in the group is a collage of a giant couple walking through city buildings, as they are surrounded with flying birds and butterflies. The couple towering over the city symbolizes how mankind has accomplished many impressive advancements, including technology, architecture, industries, and other foundations of society. However, the flowers growing on the sides of buildings and invading the city structure, as if once buried and now escaping through the concrete, illustrate that our endless advancements can never overshadow nature as it can never be suppressed. As people, we are highly complex beings and attempt to dominate other forces in nature as we progress into more intelligent species. Still, we are ultimately limited by nature.

Overall, in a world full of distractions, many of the aesthetically-pleasing images we see everyday may appear to be very shallow when taken at face value. However, these same images can be unintentionally revealing to its viewers, especially when these images are viewed in a different context to reflect aspects of our society and human tendencies. In the these collections of pictures: the morbid photos that mimic fashion magazines turn consumers' desires to avoid emotional pain through happy-go-lucky advertisements for products on their heads; the vague and questionable photos reflect our human tendency to attempt to read through the uncertainty in the world; and, finally, the photos of people interacting with plants and animals show humankind’s relationship to nature.