The Power of Pictures

Ever since I was a very little girl, i've taken great pleasure in admiring beautiful things. When I was still quite young, my mom would take me to the zoo to visit the animals or to the museum to view the exhibits. I've always loved touching, tasting, and experiencing things deeply. Images help facilitate such a process when the hands-on isn't possible. More so, images can bring us into places that we need, that stir up the parts of us we don't want to face, that resurface the things that we've stopped dreaming about, or that force us to consider things that we feel are too difficult to face. On my walls in my apartment, I have images of things that inspire me: a magazine clipping of loosely arranged flowers in an urn, an art deco poster from the 1920s, a photograph of cherry blossoms in France. These things speak to who I am and they also speak into my everyday activities.

This afternoon, I spent a few hours perusing images online and pinning several to my online "pinboards" on Pinterest. The Pinterest site has become a great outlet for storing images, recipes, decoration ideas, and the like. I love the fact that a pinboard can be used as a way to share virtually the same kind of inspirations that I have in my home. Whilst pinning some images today, I was particularly struck by the depth and gravity of what images do to me. One blog, amusingly titled "There's a bird in your hair," features simple, serene images that made me feel contemplative. Combined with some light classical music and a neutral black background, these stunning pictures really come to life online. Meanwhile, through sites like Flickr, I can browse the work of specific photographers or the favorites of certain users. Today I stumbled upon one user's favorites list that features many shots enhanced with filters to tone down their colors, giving them an ethereal, dreamy quality. These images took me into a space of rest and reflection after a brisk mid-evening run. Yet another Flickr user, this one a photographer, showcases all kinds of portraits on her photostream: a black and white of a mother in a simple tunic with a diapered child in her arms, a child watching a pirate-clad figure paint a picture and laughing, and a colorful shot of a couple looking at a piece of art. All of these photo sources stirred me to consider further what pictures do to us and why they move us.

As Getty Images founder Jonathan Klein says in a rather intriguing TED talk "images provoke reactions in people and those reactions cause change to happen." Images shake us up, change our perceptions, and can bring us to the places of freedom (or awareness) that we've needed for far too long. Klein further suggests that we "bring our own value systems" to the images that we view, meaning that images move us based on the lens through which we view them. Because photographers do not force their subjects to interpret their work through a particular perspective, there is a great beauty in the power of photography. And yet, while the photographer cannot tell the viewer how to interpret his or her images, he or she can still guide the viewer's perceptions by following a particular aesthetic or focusing on a particular theme. Likewise the very humanness to photography makes it an appealing medium for speaking to people's emotions and stirring them to action. Can an image change the world? Klein says yes, and perhaps there is something to this. While I don't totally have my finger to the pulse of what makes an image captivating, the allure has me taken, hook, line and sinker. Featured below are two recent favorites:

Source: 100layercake.com via Rebecca on Pinterest

Source: Harper's Bazaar via Rebecca on Pinterest