Jay HartCordillera (entire Andes Range)

“Plantation Overseer”

by FSA photographer Dorothea Lange

Cropped and used as an illustration in

Archibald MacLeish’s Land of the Free

Jean Mohr’s “Beyond my camera”

From Another Way of Telling

Marcel or the Right to Choose

Roche-Pallud, the Sommand Plateau 1979

“That’s no subject for a photo!”

When he saw this portrait, in which he had chosen everything for himself, he said with a kind of relief: “And now my great grandchildren will know what sort of man I was.”

“Moved”Self-portrait, 1975

Jean Mohr

Samuel Beckett

Jean Mohr

I “disguised” my face because I rejected it totally. I grimaced, I played tricks with light, I deliberately moved the camera.

Jean Mohr, 1980 by Richard Derviaz

Samuel Beckett

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Queen Elizabeth look-alikeBy Diane Arbus

Winston Churchill look-alikeBy Diane Arbus

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RjLOxrloJ0

Mr. Derrida (pronounced "deh-ree-DAH") inspired and infuriated a generation of intellectuals and students with the idea of “deconstruction.” He argued that the meaning of a collection of words is not fixed and unchanging.

For 17 years, from 1962 to 1979, he refused to be photographed for publication, in an effort to keep his face -- square, with a strong nose, thick eyebrows, dark skin and bushy white hair -- from becoming part of the investigation for meaning in his work. He also rejected the characterization of him as a dandy for his snappy dress, even as he said he liked the description.

Language, he said, is inadequate to provide a clear and unambiguous view of reality. In other words, the fixed meaning of an essay, a book, a personal letter, a scientific treatise or a recipe dissolves when hidden ambiguities and contradictions are revealed. These contradictions, inevitable in every piece of writing, he said, reveal deep fissures in the foundation of the Western world's civilizations, cultures and creations.

Jacques Derrida

(1930 -2004)

What Did I See?Was it a game, a test, an experiment? All three, and something else too:A photographer’s quest, the desire to know how the images he makes are seen,Read, interpreted, perhaps rejected by others.

In fact in face of any photo the spectator projects Something of her or himself. The image is like a springboard.

I often feel the need to explain my photos, to tell their story.Only occasionally is an image self-sufficient. This this I decidedTo allot the task of explanation to others.

John Berger talks with children about Carravaggio’s painting of the Last Supper.

From Ways of Seeing (1)

CarravaggioThe Last Supper

A Man or a Woman?Sexual Ambiguity

Man or Woman?Sexual Ambiguity

Seeing the Unseen: Women in Pink

A visual analysis of media to find patterns of gender representation

Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” - 1951 - 2008

• Time Magazine Covers and Vanity Fair Covers

Women in the Senate

• http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/women_senators.htm