Misery Exploited by "The Wonder of Photography"

Fred Morgan in Here and Now juxtaposes Siqueiros' painting, "Echo of a Scream" (show me), now in MOMA, with Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" (remind me). Seeing & Writing pairs Frank Fournier's photograph, "Omayra Sanchez," with Isabel Allende's essay of the same name. Both images attempt to express the unutterable suffering of children. Typically, Morgan leads students through a careful analysis: "What is the significance of the oil tanks in the background? Of the appearance of the child's skin?" before leading up to more general questions: "What institution is the artist commenting upon? What is he saying about it? What is he comparing it with?" This pair is included in a chapter titled "Looking at an Institution."

Seeing & Writing lets Allende's essay comment on the photograph of Omayra, a young Colombian girl, trapped in a mud slide, whose slowth death was captured worldwide on TV. But what Allende writes typifies this book's decadently aesthetic approach, especially its suffocating narcissism. The photograph first recalls Allende's own suffering daughter. Then it evokes her awe, in turn, at "the wonder of photography" and its images, and at the power of her own imagination. The essay ends associating the dying child with thoughts of human mortality. Here is a follow-up writing assignment: "Television, magazines, and the web allow us to visit a family's living room after they've successfully delivered sextuplets, or witness a stranger's turmoil in the wake of a distaster, without ever leaving our home-towns. Choose a publicly printed photograph or image or a "memorable moment" that made a profound impression on you. Write an essay that, like Allende's, describes both your first impression and what that image or moment means to you today." This pair is included in a chapter titled "Capturing Memorable Moments." Consider what is missing here and what could have been accomplished with the inclusion of some pointed criticism of this voyeurism, like the relevant part of G. Holleuffer's online essay, "Images of Humanitarian Crises: Ethical Implications," on the site for Euforic (Europe's Forum on International Cooperation").

Attitudes towards Consumerism

Unlike Seeing & Writing's uncritical "capturing" or mental munching on eye candy, Here and Now's condemnation is pretty blatant in its chapter, "Evaluating Possessions," juxtaposing a Chas. Addams' New Yorker cartoon with Pound's "Salutation" (remind me), beginning "O generation of the thoroughly smug. . . ," and with a painting, "The Moneychanger and his Wife," (show me) by Marinus van Roijmerswaele. Instructions for a two-part (draft and revision) writing assignment about "your most valued possession" include, as part of the exercise the need to shift perspectives: "Now--and this won't be easy--. . . pretend that you despise this possession. Do not make up qualities or events that did not happen; just change your attitude towards them" (84).

Seeing & Writing sprinkles advertisements, for instance, for his and her razors or various visual incarnations of Betty Crocker, throughout. Although often titillating, for example, the juxtaposition of four ads aimed at recruiting women to join the Navy, Army, or Pennsylvania Railroad, or to buy Palmolive soap, the result is self-satisfaction. The closest that Seeing & Writing comes to any critical distance are the two pages (out of 563) on the Adbusters "subvertisement" of "Branding," published in the New York Times.

Any instructor, forced by a common departmental syllabus to assign Seeing & Writing, would be well advised to supplement it with a link to the Adbusters Media Foundation. Their quarterly magazine, available in print and online, is a valuable antidote to the other 561 pages in Seeing & Writing. Have a look, for instance, at the Spring 2000 issue, "Doom, Hope, Piss, Vinegar." In fact, since Here and Now is definitely There and Then and no longer available, a better buy as an assigned class text for any course based on "an approach to writing through perception" would be an annual subscription to the Adbusters Magazine (only $20).

For those on a budget or less inclined to progressive activism, I recommend the (free) intellectually rigorous and aesethically rewarding " Visual Literacy Exercise" created by Lee A. Makela at Cleveland State University for several history courses. This exercise requires students to examine a series of Japanese woodblock prints and then write about them, not just expressing what they feel, but making inferences about salient features of Japanese geography and aspects of human adaptation to it.

Get me back to the beginning.