Change of plan..KIV ‘Siapa Kita?’

Hmmm…unfortunately ‘Siapa Kita’ project has to KIV for future plans, not for my PhD research. Why? 1st the project is out of my research track after spending times thinking about the possibilities that i might get if ‘Siapa Kita’ project happen. 2nd I know the project sounds interesting but I dont think I have enough time to focus on this project. I need to turn back and focus on Visual Mapping Malaysia project and I need to organise and plan this once in the life time research trip.

I’ve been reading interesting essays from John Berger called Uses of Photography in About Looking. He discusses about the use of photography and the various views that can be created by camera. Did you know camera was invented in 1839 by Fox Talbot. Since then, photography has been use for nearly everything (e.g. war reporting, journalism, pornography, documentation etc.). The first period of its existance photography offered a new technical opportunity; it was an implement. Now instead of offerring new choices, its usage and its ‘reading’ were becaoming habitual, an unexamined part of modern perception itself.

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‘Through photographs, the world becomes a series of unrelated, free-standing particles; and history, past and present, a set of anecdotes and faits divers. The camera makes reality atomic, manageble, and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mysery”. (Susan Sontag)

Meaning from photo can be interpreted in different ways depending on one cultural background and histories. Some people said ‘images never lies’, to what extend will it be? If histories can be map and deliberately structured, what about images?