The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing (Elkins)

This reading reminds me of a book on the nude (I’d need to go through my notes to grab the title & author) in which a naked person only becomes a nude the moment we recreate it in a drawing or in a photo. It is impossible to remove the viewer from the subject in any recreation. Inevitably we impose our subjectivity to anything. What I am more interested in is a condition in which we are not participating in a practice of extractive logic. I feel patriarchal masculinity has bred this habit into much of our current behaviors. The need to possess anything you lay your eyes on. If it sparks interest, one must have it. Can we teach ourselves that to look is to observe but not for possession?

Driving home today, I noticed the storm clouds coming into the city. Giving the skyline a different mood, one that felt familiar to Home but foreign in this new landscape.