Saturday, April 25, 2015

Assignment 5/12

Choose a passage from Jünger, write it out, explain the meaning of it, and why you chose this passage.

“The photograph stands outside of the zone of sensitivity. It has a telescopic quality; one can tell that the event photographed is seen by an insensitive and invulnerable eye. It records the bullet in mid-flight just as easily as it captures a man at the moment an explosion tears him apart. This is our own peculiar way of seeing, and photography is nothing other than an instrument of our own peculiar nature (p. 39).


In this passage we see that Jünger compares our zone of sensitivity to photograph. He draws to conclusion that we have grown insensitive to feelings and just as a photograph records tragic events in life we also record events in life with no empathy to it. I believe he is trying to say that we have developed to stilled, un-empathetic, unsympathetic living machines that just go through life recording events with no feeling attached to it. 

2 comments:

  1. I don't recall seeing you in class. However, I disagree with your point of view. What the passage is saying is that a photograph leaves us to interpret what we see. We can place ourselves in the situation for any purpose we like. A photo has no emotion but our eyes take on a meaning of what we sense. We can empathize in many ways from a a picture. We can either see it as the moment or imagine what is going on in a bigger situation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't recall seeing you in class. However, I disagree with your point of view. What the passage is saying is that a photograph leaves us to interpret what we see. We can place ourselves in the situation for any purpose we like. A photo has no emotion but our eyes take on a meaning of what we sense. We can empathize in many ways from a a picture. We can either see it as the moment or imagine what is going on in a bigger situation.

    ReplyDelete