Gazing forward, gazing back: A hermeneutic inquiry regarding photographs.

摘要

Visual culture is an interdisciplinary study of the cultural construction of the visual in the arts, media, and life in general. Being both a relatively new area of research and curriculum, it regards the visual as central to the processes through which meaning is made in a cultural context. Although the theoretical aspects of visual culture have been the purvey of art history, cultural studies and philosophy, the significance of ocular-centric and anti-ocular thought has come to the attention of researchers within Faculties of Education. This movement represents a shift from the linguistic to the cultural and now the visual turn. Framed within visual culture and an interpretive approach, the following study examines aspects of the epistemology of vision. Taking up the question, what do we learn when we learn to see, the researcher used Gadamenan hermeneutics to examine the reciprocity of vision enacted when viewing the historical photographs of Geraldine Moodie and the contemporary photographs of the author. Grounded in the work of Ivan Illich, Martin Jay and James Gibson, the researcher examines the theories of intramission and extromission, the historicity of the opsis (gaze) and the process of severing ethics from the act of vision. Calling upon Gibson's theory of visual perception that contrasts a visual field with a visual world, an ecological perspective of vision emerges. Integrated with this, comes connections to Marshall McLuhan's four effects of a technology and an eventual turning to the ethical claims of Emmanuel Levinas. Drawing upon teaching and personal experiences, the author demonstrates the process of hermeneutics in coming to a deeper understanding of the complexities, paradoxes and reversals that occur in gazing forward, gazing back.