Practices of Looking Images, Power, and Politics we are in the practice of lo 1e world. To see i @ process of observing and r oghizing the world around us. To look is to cing is something that we do some- it a greater sense of purpose and direction. if we ask, “Did you see ely make meaning of that world. irarily as we go about our daily lives. Looking is an activity fe imply happenstance ("Did you happen to see it?"). When we say, “Look at that!” it is a command. To look is an act of choice. Through looking e much we negotiate social re king is a pract tionships and meanings. like speaking, writing, or signing. Looking involves learning to interpret and, like other practices, looking invalves relationships of power. To wilfully look or not is to exercise choice and influence. To be made to look, to try to get someone else to look at you or at something you want to be noticed, or to sy mies or dangerous. There are both con engage in or difficult, fun or unpleasant, n exchange of loaks, entails a play of power. Looking can be nai us and uncanscious levels of looking. We engage in practices of looking to communicate, to influence and be influenced We live in cultures that are increasingly permeated by visual images with a variety of purposes and intended effects. These images can produce in us a wide array of emotions and responses: pleasure, desire, disgust, anger, curios shock, or contusion. We inve he images we create and encounter ona daily basis with significant power—for instance, the power to conjure an cite to action, the power t ap) t people. The rales played by absent person, the power to calm or ir persua a multitude of purposes, in a range hings to differene, af school children in verse, and complex. This s are multiple, street, was taken by photog rly 1940s who see @ murder scene i hur Fellig). of New York, where he would ph, gee was known for rapher Weege: e in the stre his it ;cenes early. In this photo: fen and to the c h to the act of looking at the forbi ra to capture heightened emotion. The children are fo equal fascina: at the murder scene with morbid fascination, as we loo! m looking cial realms of popular we encounter fe, commerce, criminal rough @ variety of film, television’video, computer all of these media: fe tha and virtual reality. One could arg al means of with t are produ We live in an increasingly image der, beforevan Gogh painting reproduced, and many of these reproductions have bee or altered by means of computer graphics. For most of us, kno first-hand, but through reproductions in books and on about art ma aintings is posters, greeting cards, classroom slides, and television specia history. The technology of images is ¢! ius central to our experience of visual culture, Representation Representation refers to the use of language and images to use words to understand create meaning about the world around us. jefine the world as we see it, and we also use images to do this. s language describe, and This process takes pl and visual media, that have rules and conventions about how t e through systems of representation, suc ley are or- a ganized. A language like English has a set of rules about how to expre: tion off resent interpret meaning, and so, for instance, do the systerns of rey painting, photo Throughout history, de ‘aphy, cinema, or television ‘ave considered at whether these sy: f represe c as itis, such t they mirror it back to us as a form of mimesis or imitation, or whether in fact we const uct the world and its meaning through the systems of representa tion we deploy. In this social constructionist approach, we only make meaning