Formal Reconnection

Well, I second Claire's call for more reading on new approaches to reading and "teaching the visual aspects of texts" (Wysocki 149). Actually this is the cluster I'll be researching now, so we'll see what I find. I was hoping Wysocki would have more answers to the questions she raises, but that might be outside the scope of her chapter. I've said this before, but I hope to assign a paper on visual arguments, specifically those involving the body, so I'll need some background material.

I like Wysocki's call to "be generously and questioningly reciprocal in our designings" and address of visual texts. This ties in nicely with my general course theme of challenging texts, of being in dialogue with whatever is being read (visual or otherwise). I'll want my students to be able to see their image in the cold, clinical way, but also to see it in the emotional way Wysocki describes. Just as Ferry (and others) could admire Riefenstahl's aesthetics and deplore the content, I'd like the students to see the effectiveness of an objectionable image - to understand why such images can become prevalent and accepted.

The idea of a "formal reconnection" of concepts of beauty, of reclaiming an idea of "particular beauty" as opposed to that of disembodied bodies, really strikes home to me because of my fiancee (Kelsey)'s work in photography. Her MFA project as a fine art photographer sought to explode the conventional notions of the "beautiful" body, especially in the fashion world, through a series of black-and-white nude self-portraits of her own zaftig shape. Most of the images are cropped to show only fragments of the body, often disorienting the viewer, suggesting landscape or other subjects. Anyway, it's this idea of creating a new idea of "beauty" that she's getting at- Wysocki's argument, particularly at its end, often reminded me of Kelsey's thesis. Tomorrow I'll see if I can get an image uploaded here.