“Ways of Seeing” by John Berger

This book is a collection of seven essays actually by a group of folks: John Berger, Sven Blomberg, Chris Gox, Michael Dibb, and Richard Hollis. It’s based on a BBS television series Berger did, but I haven’t watched that so I can’t comment on it too much. The idea is that this is a series of essays elaborating on the ideas from the series, and thinking about the format of the ideas as well. To this end, four of the essays have words and images and three are images only.

The first essay is about sight in general and how we portray and frame images, especially paintings. It is even noted in the text, it interacts with Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” as it talks about photography and how that changes how we see art today. The next is a visual essay, and this one was clear to me, it’s about the male gaze. Essay three elaborates on this in words, how women are portrayed as objects for men to consume and such (none of the authors are female I will note).

The second half is where it gets a bit obscure for me. The fourth essay is pictorial and I assume it is about the contradictions in oil painting as that is how it’s described in the brief intro, but I am not sure what those are. Especially since all of the paintings are small and black and white, I like the idea but I am lost here folks. The next essay does discuss oil paintings, primarily about possession. To own a painting is to own what it portrays, that sort of thing. The next visual essay is similar, I’m not totally sure what it’s getting at, and the final essay talks about art in advertisements and publicity and how that can contrast with the news at the time.

In general I thought this was a really interesting read. It has been a while since I read anything about art criticism and art history so I really enjoyed this short form of essays about different ideas. I even appreciate what the authors were going for with the visual essays! I think it’s a really interesting idea to present images with minimal text even identifying the images and let the viewer draw what they may. It kinda ends there for me though, on a practical sense if you are writing an essay you want the viewer to leave with the point of the essay. And I have no idea if I got that point. I don’t think I did, really, I noticed some themes but they were very surface level. Maybe if this wasn’t an essay and just a more loosely ended path it could make more sense. Or if there were just minimal words or arrows or something to communicate with the reader!

The essays with text though I really liked. I thought the initial essay you might want some familiarity with Benjamin, but that’s not necessary you can follow it just as is. The second if it wasn’t for the dudes writing about women I would probably really enjoy. There’s a very interesting discussion about how the Western form of art inherently objectifies women through tropes and just how we are used to them being portrayed. Which is so fascinating, especially because they expand to other cultures. Folks in the art world are so narrow in their view of art, you rarely see comparisons to other cultures. The oil painting and possessions one I think was my least favorite, there are a lot of ideas tossed together in that one that could have used more space. And the last essay almost completes the circle, it talks about advertisements which are reproduced images. In particular I think in the age of the Internet and Twitter, it is important to think about the images we see and what those mean, whether it’s news or an ad. None of it was super groundbreaking, I’ve seen discussions of photos and photojournalism before, but I hadn’t seen ads directly contrasted with photojournalism previously. And that might be over, we rarely see physical newspapers that will directly have an ad opposite a story. So I quite liked that one as well.

This was a short book, but quite interesting. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to pick it up, it was under high demand at the local library (I’m not quite sure why but cool). I will probably try to check out that BBC series and see how it intersects with this work.

This Is Beautiful: Talking About Science

 I recently did my only in-person interview for a postdoc position. It was a bit of a weird situation, I still have to apply and get into the postdoc program, but this was to chat with my potential mentor(s) (I'm trying to get a co-mentorship off the ground with this.)

I do think it went well and that these folks will be great together! And it reminded me that I do like talking about science a lot, potentially more than doing it haha. Because I definitely had a lot of fun, I just hope that the folks I talked to liked me as well.

“In the Dream House” by Carmen Maria Machado

This is another book that has been on my list for a while, and while the material is pretty sad and dark at times, I’m so glad that I picked it up. It’s about an abusive relationship between the author, and the partner she refers to as “the woman in the Dream House.”

The plot is fairly simple and beautifully universal in its specificity. The author meets a beautiful woman and they start dating. She ends up doing long distance with this woman as she’s in an open relationship, but then its just the two of them. And it becomes clear that something is wrong, her partner starts fights and insults her and throws things at her. And then will insist that she doesn’t remember anything bad. This continues until the abuser starts dating someone else and breaks up with the author, who is devastated. The author ends up reconnecting with the abuser’s initial partner, the one she was initially dating, and they end up married. I personally found a lot of comfort in the very last line of the acknowledgements that the author would do it all again, it led her to her wife.

This book is so thoughtful I almost need to read it again. Every chapter starts with “The Dream House as” and then a category or something for the chapter. The timeline jumps around but the story never ceases to make sense. The Dream House starts as a metaphor most clearly, then it solidifies into an actual house that the abuser lives in. And it sort of melds into both. There’s the metaphorical aspects and the real aspects. I was confused about the phrase “the woman in the Dream House” as I figured the author was described more as haunting the place with her cries, but it makes a sort of sense. She anonymized the abuser and connects her to the house where the author felt trapped, but the woman has more power in that space.

The story is accompanied by footnotes indicating different tropes from folklore. Which is a really cool touch, it makes the narrative feel more like a cautionary tale or as something happening to a fictional person. There is a brief discussion at the end about how Machado wanted her experiences to be unique, but when she started researching there are so many women telling the exact same story. Which is how I felt as well coming out of my breakup, its funny that we so desperately want to have unique experiences while also feeling as though as aren’t alone. But turning it into folklore is a way to highlight the individual, while noting how it combines with other tales.

Machado makes it clear, this isn’t supposed to be a definitive text on lesbian abuse. But it is really cool that she did all of that work and added it into the text. She writes about lesbians trying to get their experiences recognized, and how the way lesbians subvert gender roles has made that hard. And the importance of knowing that abuse can come from within the queer community, and that it almost certainly will. Because we are all people! We are all flawed! There is no way to guarantee that a community is going to be entirely wholesome. It’s definitely been something that I have thought about, but it is shockingly something that not many people are open about. You have to experience it, usually, to know that it happens.

So much was presented so thoughtfully and creatively in this book, I am so glad that I picked it up. It is masterful, and I think it will stick with me for a while.

This Is Beautiful: Yes Graduate Soon

 Hey look at this one two punch of posts, I do have a date to defend in February! I wanted to do nothing else that day I got the news. It's beautiful and we are going to get through this!

“Down Among the Sticks and Bones” by Seanan McGuire

This is another book in the series that to Every Heart a Doorway is in, which I read and absolutely loved, so I was really excited to pick up another book in the series. This book is very different, it is more of a prequel to the other book, and it follows Jack and Jill and their experiences within the Moors.

It starts with Jacqueline and Jillian as kids and describes how their parents wanted them to be perfect kids, and set them against each other. When a stairway appears in their attic, they head down together and run into the castle of the Master. Jill stays with him to be a pretty princess, and Jack heads off with the local mad scientist to learn science. Jack gets close to people in the village, gets a girlfriend, while Jill dreams of becoming a vampire herself. They are forced to leave when Jill kills Jack’s girlfriend before becoming a vampire and the mad scientist sends them back to their world to escape an angry mob. It ends with them reappearing in their parents’ house.

This was a very different book from the first one. The narration style is similar of course, but it is more an in depth look at these specific two characters and what makes them tick, while I liked the color of all the different worlds in the first book. I do think the book does a lot to help make you understand the events of the previous book, but I didn’t enjoy the experience as much as the first one.

So it was a good read if you are like me and are invested in this universe already, but wouldn’t say that it added much beyond my understanding of these characters. I hope that the mad scientist’s tech with the doors comes back later, but I’m hoping for a more expansive look in the next novel I pick up in the series.

This Is Beautiful: I Might Graduate Soon?

 Well I had my most recent committee meeting a week ago, and it looks like it's finally going to happen? They said I could actually graduate next semester and get this thing done. I just have to find a date that works for everyone and make it happen! It's surreal, and maybe it'll feel more real once I know the date for sure, but I almost don't quite believe that it's happening. Idk, I hope it goes smoothly and I get some clarity so that I can calm down a bit and relax a little.