Looking at, or seeing it, is not the same thing. In our lives, it took months to recognize the shape of our mother’s face. Since then, finding the meaning behind what our eyes see accelerated. In adult lives, torrents of images in front of us might be pointless unless we assign a focus, or meaning, to what we look at.
If a single-word view has so many meanings, can I expect a viewer to see the same thing in the image above as I do? Or that we can all draw agreeable conclusions about what this image represents. Is it, by any chance, a rendering of conflicting forces in our lives or simply the water's surface in turbulent conditions? A picture of art or reality? Regardless, it could have value only when we can perceive it, communicate, and verify sharing it.
The word landscape in arts is generally associated with the representation of land in a way that pleases our senses. The images above and below render lands in southern Ontario that are nearby. Suppose these two places looked the opposite way in the past.
Let's think then, what would that imply?
Life survives by carving out an orderly space of living conditions in the physical world, where a natural state of matter is a disorder.
I am not wise enough to claim full ownership of this statement. The foundation of it was laid down by science a long time ago. I derived it from our culture, or in other words, the readily available collection of all human interpretations of reality. Thus, the culture could also fill the space between these two images with meaningful narratives.
Well, beauty is in the mind of the beholder. However, as we all share our culture, finding common understandings that bind us should be easier than those dividing us. After all, like everyone else, I need oxygen in every breath I take and food on my table. Casualties have no voice in the narratives that follow them.
Meanings are like stories. Sometimes, they fade away; other times, they assume lives independently, with all traits, like images, of a "staying power."
"The painter constructs, the photographer discloses."
Susan Sontag, American writer.
