Li Gongming
Image Theory, by W. J. T. Mitchell, translated by Lan Li, by Badya | Chongqing University Press, August 2021 edition, 464 pp. 98.00 yuan
The famous American scholar of visual and image research W. J. T. Mitchell's masterpiece "Image Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation" (1994; Translated by Lan Li, Chongqing University Press, August 2021) has been translated into Chinese more than a decade ago, and the new translation seen now is said to have improved the quality of translation. Mitchell's study of vision and imagery is theoretically deep, and involves many disciplines such as art, literature, film, and news media, and the difficulty of translation is understandable. The author is like holding a small flag called "image" in his hand, leading the reader through the theoretical labyrinth of culture, consciousness, vision, and text, with the goal not to move toward a complete theory of images, but to discover the question of images with real meaning in the twists and turns: What exactly are images intended in contemporary culture? How should images and text get along? How to discover the power of vision in controversial films and news stories? Some commentators have said that Mitchell's image theory will be a little difficult for beginners and easy for researchers to be fascinated. For theoretical researchers, this is quite an interesting praise.
Obsessed, my feeling is that he will lead you into some unexpected path to rediscover the image. Let me give you an example. The book talks about the 1989 film Do the Right Thing, written and starred by the African-American director Spike Lee, in which the bespectacled young black Buggin'Out constantly asks the pizzeria owner Sal to hang photos of black celebrities on the store's "wall of fame.", and Sal's answer is to the effect that this is my pizzeria, and it is my business to hang only Italian-American photos. Buggin'Out thinks that with the help of our customers, you can open this pizzeria, so customers have some say. This became one of the triggers for the final burning of the pizzeria. But Mitchell moves from the relationship between images and public space into the analysis, revealing that the cultural consciousness behind the conflict makes the wall of fame a symbolic landscape that leads to cultural and emotional conflicts. But the question he went on to ask was something I hadn't expected: He found that in the film the community was full of Images of African Americans publicly reproduced in commercial posters, pedestrian costumes, and street music, so "Why aren't these symbols of black self-esteem enough to satisfy Buggin'Out?" The answer, I think, is that these are just symbols of black self-respect and black glory, and what Buggin'Out wants is respect from white people.... (p. 375) Somewhat cruel to say, Mitchell reveals the truth about the images of black advertising: the black public figures in the images are merely the "property" of white commercial establishments—whether professional sports teams, record labels, or film distributors; the public space in which the black image has gained prominence is merely a commercial propaganda space, not a "real public sphere into which they can enter as equal citizens." (p. 375) There is no doubt that this commercially functioning, economically public image does not represent an egalitarian public culture. Thus, Sal's pizzeria as a semi-private, semi-public space held by whites is in a more authentic sense—a measurement space for racial equality and cultural respect, and only in this space can the cultural self-esteem and emotional demands of blacks for equality be truly satisfied.
In addition to thinking about the relationship between image and space, Mitchell has a more acute understanding and thinking about the relationship between the photographer and the photographed, between the image and the text, which is both cooperative and confrontational. Take, for example, his analysis of Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1980) and James Agee's and Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939), We can see that his thinking on the relationship between photography and power, image and text, is acutely and profoundly characterized.
Jacob Rees is generally known as the famous American photojournalist and social reformer, and his 1890 photo album "How the Other Half Lives" reflected the life of the American slums and prompted the United States to pass the first bill to improve the living conditions of the slums. But Mitchell noted that Reese was a journalist who worked closely with police, and many of the photos were taken during night raids. An accident is described in his photographic transcript: his glitter powder nearly burned down an apartment. "The event does not appear in the photographs: instead, we see scenes of filthy apartments, in which these dazed subjects (who are often awakened from their slumber) appear in a passive dazzle under the harsh illumination of Reese's glitter powder." (p. 278) Mitchell is keenly aware of the inequality of status and power that exists between the photographer and the photographed: "The 'photograph' of the human subject by the photographer (or author) is a specific social contact, usually between a damaged, victimized, weak person and a relatively privileged observer, and this photograph tends to act as an 'eye of power', as an agent of certain social, political, or news organizations. (p. 280) He also finds a relationship that is both dependent and antagonistic from Reese's photo-essay: "We might say that Reese allowed his text to subvert his image and make it questionable." A more appropriate view is that texts 'give' images (and their subjects) independent and humane character.... The photographs may be 'evidence' of propositions that are very different from the official uses that Reese is trying to express, and in turn the viewer raises an uncomfortable question: Are the political and epistemological forces of these images (their 'shocking' value) justified the violence that accompanies them? ...... Resistance arises in the text-photo relationship, and we go from reading to looking less easy and slower. (p. 278) This analysis reminds us that even documentary photography, which aspires to advance the cause of social reform, also needs to see the power of power structures and the complex relationships that exist between images and texts.
The james Agee album Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939) has always been considered "equally important, independent, but complementary" to photograph and text, but how exactly are the two independent and complementary? Mitchell made an in-depth analysis of this. He begins by pointing out that the photographs in this album are completely separate not only from the text, but also from any minimalist textual features that usually appear in the actual images: there is no caption, explanation, date, name, place, or even number to help us "read" the photograph. In simple terms, "Evans provided a picture without text, and Aiji provided text without a photo." (p. 283) For any reader who doesn't just want to see a photo, I'm afraid it's a big barrier to reading. So, "What is the significance of this barrier between photograph and text?" One of the answers, Mitchell says, is to be linked to Greenberg's modernist aesthetic, a quest for the "purity" of each medium, forcing us back to the formal and material character of the image itself. For example, the portrait of Anne May Geger "presents an elusive beauty and mystery." ...... Liberated from contingency and circumstance, she entered a space of pure contemplation, into a purely aesthetic object, into the Mona Lisa of the Great Depression". (p. 286) But he immediately points out that this inevitable aesthetic reaction to a real person in an extremely poor environment is deeply disturbing, and goes on to ask: Why do we have the right to look at this woman and discover the beauty of her fatigue, pain, and anxiety? What gives us the right to look at her? As Aiji asks us, "Who are you going to read these words and study these pictures?" (p. 287) The question that follows is more complex, with Mitchell arguing that "the aesthetic separation between Evans's images and Edge's text is not merely a formal feature, but an ethical strategy, a way of preventing people from easily entering the world they represent." I call it an 'ethical' strategy because it is likely to be counterproductive to any political end." He argues that the "cooperation" between Evans's images and Aiji's text is dominated by a rhetoric of defiance, "which considers cooperation with government and news agencies (agricultural security administration [FSA], Fortune magazine) to be false and superficial, and that their images and words are 'fully cooperative' in subverting this collaboration." The barrier between photographs and texts is actually a disruption of effective surveillance and propaganda mechanisms..." (p. 289) This analysis may seem to lead to the assumption that their cooperation is aimed at resisting the ACA's intention to use photographs to promote social transformation, but more adequate arguments are needed.
An important problem for the study of history and imagery is when researchers are confronted with two different types of image-text partnerships—in addition to evans and Eggy's type of graphic separation, there is also an image of Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell in You Have Seen Their Faces. The type of collaboration of texts, the close cooperation between photographs and texts, each with an explanation indicating the location of the shooting and the remarks of the central characters— how to consider the motives of the former and the failure of influence in popular culture, as well as the success of the latter, should be considered at the level of "cross-examination of image history".
Finally, look at Mitchell's reflections on images and audience reactions. The audience is not only the target group of image producers, but also the users and disseminators of images. But the sense of study of the viewer does not arise so spontaneously. Mitchell points out that while the central argument of Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer was that "a new viewer was formed in Europe" in the first decades of the nineteenth century, he had no intention of studying the empirical history of viewing behavior, was not interested in studying the visuality of it as an everyday cultural practice, and was also interested in the observer who was branded by gender, class, and race. Spectator) body is not interested. The important issue for Mitchell is to study the act of seeing, what people like to see, how to describe what they see, and how to understand visual experiences in pictures and in the landscape of everyday life. In particular, he cautions us to note that the cultural manipulation of spectators by ruling institutions through images is a universal cultural landscape of the image age, and that cultural bureaucrats are justified in their optimism: "It is well known that audiences are easily manipulated by images, and the clever use of images can numb them to political terror and make them accept racism and sexism, deepen class divisions, and regard these as natural and necessary conditions for existence." (Introduction, xvii)
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