The Vietnam War, and The Striking Malleability of Human Perception .
In July of 2017, a few hours before I set-off on a month-long motorbike journey across the length of the country, I walked the aisles of Saigon’s war museum; and before me, in one particularly memorable room, were the photographs of British Photojournalist Larry Burrows.
Knowing what was ahead of me, I was entranced by these vivid depictions of the war that took place upon the very grit and soil on which I stood; my heart raged with empathy, sorrow, passion.
I had never known such touching photographs, such incredible life in imagery, able to rivet me into emotional turmoil as to the soldiers depicted; the insane madness of it all, the horror, the sheer intensity.
I remember leaving the museum with a profound feeling of nostalgia for the country I was about to witness myself; and all throughout my journey, it stayed with me — that on this ground on which I was travelling, but a few decades ago, a savage war occurred; and many men died brutal deaths, and suffered extreme brutalities of life.
Woven into my journey was a vivid story that contextualised my first hand experience; fragments of the past stood out to me like little portals into an imagined realm that seemed to merge with the present-day landscape — such that, by witnessing those photographs as a precursory experience, my whole perception of the country was morphed; deepened, eclipsed by a semi-fictional, semi-real fantasy of extreme detail and proportion.
From this experience, then, emerges a question that I will use this opportunity to explore.
How, and to what extent, can images enhance, alter, or even recast our perception of the environment?
I will take on this question in a somewhat light, explorative manner; I do not particularly expect to come to any defined conclusions given the depth and complexity of the inquiry — which is ultimately of metaphysical proportions, however I do not enjoy or consider metaphysical inquiry particularly useful, and as such I will discuss upon a certain fundamental assumption of the experiencer as a separate conscious entity; the environment being that which the experiencer perceives; external, the forms of the universe — albeit, perhaps, far less static and permanent than one may assume.
I will take on this question from the contextual perspective of the photojournalist; in terms of the effect of photographic storytelling on the individual’s experience of the world.
I will begin with a quote by the Author of Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse:
‘There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the inner world to assert itself.’
One might assume that one can, to a large extent, control how strongly the dominant patterns of imagery, produced by culture and its media, effect and alter one’s perception of the world.
However, as visual literacy gradually comes to the forefront of academic consciousness as an important field of study; and thus, initiates fundamental inquiry into the pedagogy of photojournalistic and visual theory, it is becoming clear that the visual stories fed to the public via news publication, television, and the cinematic industry have a massive impact on the public’s perception and interpretation of the world.
Looking back again at my personal experience of this phenomena, though the images I saw were so far removed from the current state of Vietnam, it was almost as if a set of filters had been placed upon my vision; or rather, fixed upon my vision; such that, almost as if I was literally there in the war — now returning after decades of absence, everything I saw and experienced within Vietnam was marred, or perhaps supplemented with a certain flavour that was burned upon my perceptual taste buds.
The images, if you like, sowed the seeds of an unreal world that my mind labelled as ‘Vietnam’; a vast, intricate picture of the imagination that based itself upon the images, though was of far greater and more holistic expanse than the images in and of themselves.
The set of images, partly, I am sure, due to their brutal viscerally and emotion, burned themselves into my memory; they laid the pillars for a seemingly real mental construction of ‘Vietnam’; charged with emotion, sound, feeling.
Thus, my perception of the environment was certainly affected by the images — (to what extent I am unsure); such that the ‘real’ became merged and reformed by the ‘unreal’. I do not believe this to be necessarily negative; though, if one wishes to prioritise nuanced truth over simplified, pre-packaged fantasy: it must be investigated as to how one can transcend the mental schema that are constantly implanted and imagined by and through the abundance of images that one can hardly avoid in modern life.
‘People don’t have ideas, ideas have people.’ — C. Jung.
In Hesse words, we must explore the process of allowing the ‘inner world to assert itself’ over the ‘images outside’ that we naively take, to some extent, for reality. This may be a more direct solution than simply to discuss, in our academic and pedagogic domains of society and discourse, how the production of these images — in photojournalistic contexts, for example — may be practiced with more congruence to reality; as ultimately, no image of reality can supply the individual with sufficient content for an accurate representation of truth in all the subtle nuances and contextual factors of direct experience.
This is not to argue that there is no utility is training the photojournalist, for example, in a fundamental awareness of the impact of image on public perception. It is, however, a suggestion that perhaps there is a greater, more urgent issue to be discussion alongside it; an issue with far deeper implications for the individual and the collective society; a philosophical, political, psychological issue — that of the individuals propensity for external manipulation; a fundamental repression of independent thought, judgment, and intuitive reasoning.
‘The mechanism of convention keeps people unconscious, and then, like wild game, they can follow their customary runways without the necessity of conscious choice.’ — C. Jung.
I will now take a very brief divergence into an aspect of neuroscience as means of attempting an explanation as to how image affects perception.
There exists a collection of brain cells at the top of the spinal column, about the size of your little finger.
It is directly wired to all of your senses with the exception of smell.
This tiny system of neurons regulates our perception of the environment through the filtering of information from the senses to the brain. It operates based on the brains preference of information; from our memory, our mental schema, our preconceptions; it operates on a basis of relevancy and congruency to our pre-established world-view and sense of self.
Thus, we are much more likely to view the environment around us ‘through the lens’ of the dominant imagery we have been exposed to in our recent past; and the reticular activating system, the scientific name for what I have described, offers a biological explanation for this.
The images we see on a daily basis create a pre-conditioned image of the world around us, which is then used as a filter by the RAS upon which we then perceive and interpret the environment around us.
In my particular example, the extreme images of conflict and violence were hardly at all likened to the modern Vietnamese landscape; however, I still experienced the country through the lens of the conflict — such that, as I said at the beginning, I would notice ‘little fragments of the past that stood out to me like little portals’: old men with one leg limping down the street, old green military caps. No doubt, it was due to the RAS that I so often noticed these little fragments of the war still visible; and, I am sure that my mind fabricated an equal amount of fictional perceptions of the environment as a result of the image that L. Burrows has implanted into my psyche.
Going back to the central question I have endeavoured to explore then: How, and to what extent, can images enhance, alter, or even recast our perception of the environment?
It seems fundamentally clear to me that images can enhance, alter, and even recast our perception of the environment, and to a very large extent. One only has to observe the growing global phenomena of extreme prejudice, misconception and stereotyping of a vast multitude of subjects to see that the mass of human beings are keen to be misled; and are, all the time, by the various forms of media and miseducation with both word and image.
Exactly how image affects perception is a much more complex and uncertain topic and can be explored on many dimensions; also begging the question of what the individual can do to reduce the effects of a constant bombardment of images on his or her ability to observe the world openly, curiously, as a scientist without pre-conviction: in a constant search for truth — or, at least, the dispelling of untruth.
Perhaps Francis Bacon, an British philosopher who’s works are credited with developing the scientific method, can shed light on this issue.
‘If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.’ — F. Bacon.
Perhaps, in order to, as Hesse describes, ‘allow the world within to assert itself’, thereby transcending the image seeded preconceptions of subjects within environment that the RAS uses to regulate our sensory perceptions in congruency with societal conventions of thought, one might do well to step back and admit that any preconceived notion is by necessity limited; and as such, the way to true perception; that is, perception unclouded by fabricated mental conception, is through admitting our own naivety as individual human beings — in embracing the uncertainty of being, over the comfort of pre-packaged half-truths.
As such, we may be able to take on board photographic documentation with a philosophers mind, with careful skepticism; perhaps this is what we may do well, also, to educate our youth in: that is, in how to think.
Axle.
