LBST 330 – Fall 2018
Module 2 – Research In Context
Response Paper #1 to Chapter 1 Ways of Seeing
The following is a brief response to an excerpt from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in which the author discusses the history of art and the dominant authorities and ideologies which have shaped the creation, perception, and preservation of art over time. Reading this text and composing this response is intended to assist me in elaborating upon a recently completed fields of interest assessment by encouraging me to apply relevant ideas from the text to the process I’m currently in of conceptualizing, designing, and constructing a research plan for my upcoming graduation project. In this excerpt from Ways of Seeing, Berger thoughtfully interrogates the notion of ‘seeing’ and highlights, through numerous historical examples, the ways that images are representative of vision and perspective, are acts of choice, are dynamic, are relational, and are ultimately political due to their incredible power to shape reality and to either help people to situate themselves in their own history or to sever them from it.
For the purposes of this response, I was asked to consider what kind of sample data I might incorporate into research for my graduation project, based on my current emerging fields of interest, and what kind of opportunities and pitfalls I thought might accompany the use of specific types of sample data based on Berger’s text. I currently have a diverse array of emerging fields of interest, but one example that occurred to me was how I’d formerly thought of using archival images as primary sources to support an exploration of Indigineity and Decolonization in the Canadian context and how reading this text significantly undermined my perception of the strength of photographic data as evidence for this kind of research by pointing out how, despite their reputation for being reliable sources, photographs fail to represent a totally objective, accurate or comprehensive view of reality.
Ways of Seeing has clearly illustrated, for me, the deeply important ways that the sample data I choose to work with and incorporate into my graduation project will shape the process of research and determine its outcome. As an emerging researcher, I am also humbled to realize the power I hold, in simply selecting which sample data to use, to either showcase or erase certain dimensions of history and reality. In fact, while considering the implications of this text, I found myself rather overwhelmed by the degree to which I felt this process of inclusion, exclusion, and circulation of information about the past through the control of imagery had shaped my current reality.
The greatest blunder I believe I could make in using archival photographic imagery would be for me to fail to adequately contextualize the images. If I were to use archival photographic images for sample data, a great deal of research would need to be done to understand why these photos were taken and why they and not others were preserved in an archive for my viewing and, perhaps even more importantly : which photos were not taken or deliberately excluded from the archive and why. I would also need to be extremely cautious of my lack of authority to judge the qualitative meaning of the photos to their creators and subjects.
On the other hand, Berger’s text also discusses the importance and positive potential of engaging with images, partially because of the sheer volume of them in our lives, but also as a means of empowerment through the enhancement of our understanding of the nature and purpose of the language of images we find ourselves immersed in as human beings. Berger also presents the loss of authority of images in recent history (due to their mass reproduction and rapid sharing) as both a loss and an opportunity. He argues that this decentralization of power combined with an active search for meaning in our lineage provide possibilities for freedom and agency.
So far, as an emergent interdisciplinary researcher, I have aligned myself with the critical paradigm of research (as opposed to the scientific and interpretive paradigms) meaning that the questions I seek to answer and the research I conduct in pursuit of those answers are rooted in a desire to investigate the distribution and functions of power in society and to affect positive change (decreasing social inequality, for example) as well as a belief in the power of praxis. This positionality has certainly informed my reading of Berger’s Ways of Seeing and may have also led, in some way, to the increased commitment I now feel to infusing the highest level of intention and care into the planning of my research methods for this project in order for me to present the closest representation of ‘the Truth’ as possible in my project, regardless of the subject matter or moment of interest, and to expose the existing power structures in society as opposed to simply reproducing them.
Finally, If I do decide to incorporate photographic or other forms of imagery into my research, conducting my research within the critical paradigm will allow me the freedom to direct my attention away from whether the images are subjective or objective, as the interpretive and scientific paradigms squabble over endlessly, and towards reaching a better understanding of their social functions and the power they hold to tell us stories of our past and to reflect our nature.