1. Write at least three things that you
take away from the article. These should be major, significant points
that you found to be thought-provoking and/or helpful in analyzing and
understanding Beato's photography.
1) Men are always the ones who look and women are always the ones that are looked at.
2) There are different layers of gaze in an image. For example, the photographer's gaze "is represented by the camera's eye and leaves its clear mark on the structure and content of the photograph" (Lutz and Collins 137). The magazine's gaze includes the editors' decisions and choice. The magazine reader are encouraged to imagine the ideological aspects of the image...
3) Whether the person in the image look into the camera's eye or not reveals power dynamics about the relationship between the viewer and the viewed.
2. With reference to some of the
concepts you acquired from the article, copy two photographs from Beato's album
into a post on your personal blog and present your analysis. You should
give as detailed an analysis as possible, but put an emphasis on your analysis
of the "gaze" as it relates to the article, including "the
non-Western subject's gaze," but also including "the reader's
gaze," as well as any other gazes that you find relevant.
This is an image of a Japanese officer’s wife.
She could be the real Japanese officer’s wife as indicated in the caption, or
she could only be a model dressed and posing as a Japanese officer’s wife.
Anyway, from the Beato’s gaze, the woman in the image should tell the viewer what
a Japanese married woman looks like. She sticks her right hand into the belt.
It seems that she is trying to protect the white thing in her belt. In terms of
viewers’ gaze, viewers are invited to take a close look at the image and dream
in its ideological space with the help of the caption. In the caption, Beato
talks about how ugly a married Japanese woman is, because he thinks that their
staining teeth black and shaving eyebrows are far more barbarous than body
piercing. Although we cannot see from the image that she has stained her teeth
black or completely shaved her eyebrows, the viewers are invited by the
photographer to imagine what that would look like. In terms of the woman’s gaze,
she does not look directly at the camera, but looks elsewhere, which signifies
her high social status, just as Lutz and Collins indicate that the more
powerful social status the depicted person is in the image, the more likely he
or she is looking elsewhere. She is not smiling, which indicates that she is
not so approachable.
This is an image of a man feeling the impulse
of a woman. The man signifies the “type” of Japanese doctors, while the woman
who has a white band around her head signifies a patient. From the photographer’s
gaze point of view, Beato planned to scatter all the doctor’s tool kits abound,
trying to show the viewers that Japanese traditional doctors had very limited
tools and equipment to diagnose or cure patients. In the middle of the image, a
sword handle is revealed, indicating the doctor’s identity. Beato is trying to
create the myth of traditional Japanese medical system. From the caption, we
can see that Beato contempt traditional Japanese doctors and their ways of
diagnosing and curing with herbal medicine. Again it indicates the
West-centered ideology. In terms of the woman’s gaze in the image, she lowers
her eyes and looks at her arm, completely avoiding any eye contact either with
the doctor or anyone. She is not smiling, which signifies further that she is
not feeling very well or she is satisfied with the doctor’s treatment. The
doctor is not looking at anyone, either, which signifies that he is very
focused on his job.
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