Quotes About Observation

The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter and model: even if the model is a mountain or a shelf of empty medicine bottles.

When he painted a road, the roadmakers were there in his imagination, when he painted the turned earth of a ploughed field, the gesture of the blade turning the earth was included in his own act. Whenever he looked he saw the labour of existence; and this labour, recognised as such, was what constituted reality for him. (On Vincent Van Gogh)

A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either. It's more like a fleeting, subjective impression.

A drawing of a tree shows not a tree but a tree being looked at

Seeing come before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.

Men watch. Women watch themselves being watched.

Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way.

Photographs do not translate from appearances. They quote from them.

Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from an infinity of other possible sights. This is true even in the most casual family snapshot. The photographer's way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject.

Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.

He wore glasses and you immediately noticed his eyes. They were unusual because their look was both penetrating and sensitive. A man, you said to yourself, who calculated in millimetres.

The Photographer's way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. The painter's way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on canvas or paper. Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.

Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented ; it then showed how something or somebody had once looked - and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people. Later still this specific vision of the image-maker was also recognized as part of the record. An image became a record of how X had seen Y.

bakmak bir seçme edimidir.

kar??daki tepeyi gördüÄŸümüzü kabul edersek o tepeden goruldugumuzu de kabul etmemiz gerekir. görüÅŸün iki yanl?l??? konuÅŸmalar?n iki yanliligindan daha bask?nd?r.

Günümüzde her yanda bol miktarda imge var. Daha önce hiç bu kadar çok ÅŸey incelenip seyredilmemiÅŸti. Her an, gezegenin ya da ay?n öte yüzünde nesnelerin nas?l göründüÄŸüne bir göz atabiliyoruz. Görüntüler ÅŸimÅŸek h?z?yla kaydedilip aktar?l?yor." sayfa 26

Seeing comes before words. A child looks and recognises before it can speak

A]nimals are always the observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance. They are the objects of our ever-extending knowledge. What we know about them is an index of our power, and thus an index of what separates us from them. The more we know, the further away they are.

A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself.

Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves

Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed is female. Thus she turns herself into an object of vision: a sight.

Freud only rarely draws on the data of direct observation, one or two of the occasions when he does so are key ones. Instances are the cotton-reel incident on which he bases much of his argument in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (S.E., 18, pp. 14–16), and the agonising reappraisal of the theory of anxiety that he undertakes in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926).

The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you've found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.