Identity gives us a sense of who we are but it is not stable and can change over time as it responds to events and experiences. Your identity may change while you at University as the context of your life may be different from that in the past and your understanding of photography from doing this blog may also change how you see the world in the context of its cultural influences. We may also experience clashing identitities: religious, community, national or cultural and sexual identity. During this lecture we looked at the affect of history and colonialism on racial identity. As part of semiotics we saw that meaning could often be more clearly understood by looking at differences: man/women, culture/nature, black/white. However this does not show the complexities of differences where there are often overlaps. Also how racism and also sexism functions within our society. This has been documented within photograph, on film and within the history of painting. Many artists have looked at it within their work. Above is an example of Jeff Walls work, shown as massive billboard sized light box. He is commenting on an everyday observation of racism in the street - for us to understand difference in terms that do not replicate concepts of dominance or superiority.
If you missed this lecture on one of your core subjects then look at your two free books for this module:
L & Sturken, M (2001)
Practices of Looking : An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford: Oxford
University Press
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of
Seeing, London; Harmondsworth : British Broadcasting Corporation: Penguin.
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