Lutz and Collins

Lutz and Collins in the article, "The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic" write about the gaze that can be found in every photograph. There are two fundamental attributes that a photograph and a non-western person share, “they are objects at which we look at”. The goal of the gaze is described as “de-centering the viewing subject and subvert the attempt to find a coherent object at the end of the gaze”. The gaze that is present in so many photographs can be manipulated so the audience sees their reflection through the subject’s eyes in a way that is known and pleasurable.

National geographic describes the gaze in four separate parts; confronting the camera, looking at an object or person in the frame, looking off into the distance and lack of a gaze all together. When a person is looking at the camera it means that it is not candid and the subject knows he/she is being photographed. These types of photographs can be very beautiful however I find beauty in candid photos where the photographer is capturing an unscheduled moment in time. When a person is looking out into the distance it has the appearance of being, “dreamy, vacant, absent minded….forward looking, future oriented…” When there is no gaze present there is no longer a focus on the subject but the landscape becomes a crucial part of the frame.

The photos that appear in National geographic have always been magical and mysterious to me. I remember as a child flipping through the magazines that we had stacked up on the bookshelf in awe at the foreign and distant images. The photos gave me a desire to travel and a craving for the new and magical places that appeared in every picture. “We are captured by the temptation to view the photographs as more real than the world or at least as a comfortable substitute for it- to at some level imagine a world of basically happy, classless, even noble, others in conflict neither with themselves or with ‘us’. The photos give us an invitation to travel and an invitation to dream and get lost inside the colors, emotion and mystery.