Guest Lecture

The conflict between Farhad’s experience as a photojournalist and as a viewer is that there’s a difference on what he intended to show the audience as a photojournalist and what he actually sees or meaning he gets when he looks at the images; in other word, he cannot find a way to demonstrate his real intention on the photos that he took to his audience, not even himself can get the right meaning. In this case, invisible presence and visible absence can be related to the situation. At the beginning of his presentation, he pointed out two important factors that plays an important role in his photojournalist career, he used his parent as the example to describe that the characteristics of his mother, caring and guiding, as invisible presence and the characteristics of his father, strict and stringent, as the visible absence. My understanding is that as a photojournalist he tries his best to work on giving meanings to his works and distributing those meaning to the audience through his works but it turns out that those images tend to give a different meaning to the audiences and this is a visible absence, people can see and understand objects inside the images and have a strong feeling on it but the real meaning are less likely to be observed. On the other hand, as a viewers the memories that his photos remind him are not the objective that he was focusing in his project, but those memories that are not related to the project (little things that he contributed to or discovered during the time) and this is an invisible present, those side memories are not what the images are trying to show but those memories located somewhere inside the images that may have a stronger presence than the real meaning.

            My argument is that this type of discrepancy can hardly be resolved or get rid of. The point is that differences between the artist and the audiences are always existed. It will be super hard or even impossible for audiences to have the exact same thoughts as the creator/artist when they look at the his or her art piece unless the artist specifically mentions it on their work. Similar idea to Farhad’s on using his parent to explain the situation, you cannot force your mother to act like your father, vice versa, it is just a balance between life, or in the photo that taken by Farhad. Visible absence and invisible presence need each other existence in order compose a completed, meaningful image or photo, it is just the matter on the way you see and understand it. In my opinion, they are part of the factors that make art fun and frustrating to watch, to discover, and to understand.