Image Introspection

This is an edited image of my adventures in Poland, with the original having much less saturated blues and overall more dark values in the bottom half of the picture. I wanted to use it for this analysis as it is most definitely an inclusion to my Interactice Environment project. 

First, there is no linguistic message within the image, or practically any other images I am using. Perhaps influenced by one of my largest artistic aspirations, Rain World, I only see language as a symbolic in my artworks, and unless I have to be specific in my commentary (such as, critiquing a particular brand), I prefer to keep language undecodable or unexistant in my work.

Rain World employs an imagined alphabet with letters assembled 

randomly and thus producing no "real" language

The literal messages are many, as we discussed in class: there is the soviet-era socialist buildings blurred in the background (which, I did not mention, were a part of the "jewish ghetto" in the city, Lodz, during WWII), there is the reflections in the puddle, the puddle itself with the varied textures, and the bit of vegetation in the corner of the image. While there is little manipulation of reality in this image, with things appearing as they would in reality (except for vivid colors), the particular focus and framing of the symbols creates many symbolic messages. 

Before we get to those, I do want to mention that there are no intended anchor or relay accompanied linguistic messages here... If you spot some, let me know in the comments!

With the culturally-specific objects represented only in the upper, blurred half of the image, the implications come in the implication of jusxtapositions of those with the less culturally-specific elements. The grass we can see here just as much of as in Poland is of vivid green, and same with the puddle next to it. The architecture in the image is not unique to Poland, though is unique to a specific timeframe as such brutalist-socialist approach was quite short-lived, and unique to areas colonized by Soviet Union. 

    As someone who studies Yebenya Aesthetics, I pair the "panel" buildings with the fairly universal experience among those having lived in an urban setting of post-soviet union nostalgia. For me, that nostalgia lies in having completely lost connections to most of my childhood spatial experiences, unable to visit Russia and having 3/5 neighbourhoods I grew up in demolished. 

    In class, we also mentioned the jutxaposition of nature and architecture, the stark contrast between rigid, geometric, and vertical shapes of the buildings with the low-laying, horizontal planes of the organic mesh at the bottom of the image.

    Lastly, there is the connection to my childhood gaze in the deep blurring of background scenery, and high vividness of the foreground in terms of vibrancy of colors. It's an allusion to how I experienced the world while young: fixated on the things right in front of me, almost never captivated by things collosal and monumental and inorganic. 

    

The whole image is framed vertically, and with awareness of the frame borders- no object is cut off, with a clear center of the frame. I was also following *the grid* while making this, so this is quite Instagram-esque in summary. 

Is there truth in this image? I'd say so, since almost all of it is a "found environment", with only colors modified. It's almost exactly as how one could experience reality. There is no obvious deceptive elements, and the degree of their deceptiveness depends on how vivid the photograph looks on different forms of media. 

I think that there is no particular connoted message- I simply was attempting to provide an experience of my childhood gaze with this picture, and whether the viewer treats it as such depends entirely on their own cultural and experiential backgrounds.