Seeing With Awareness

I took this picture recently while on a photo walk. During the walk, I was intentionally open to new perspectives, so it’s easier to notice things that I would normally miss.

In this case, it seemed like the box appeared to be a face. Now, this box is in our front yard and I’ve probably looked at it hundreds of times without noticing that. But with an open mind, the association jumped out.

I took a picture, edited it slightly to clarify the appearance (mainly cropping) and showed it to someone else. They didn’t see the face until I mentioned it, then agreed and even described it as a tiki mask.

Now, the box clearly isn’t a mask and wasn’t designed to look like a face. This is just an example of the human mind’s tendency to see patterns where there are none, especially faces.

However, it’s not just patterns that appear, but emotions, memories, and other associations. Images can produce a broad range of impressions, depending on the individual, even if the image doesn’t explicitly evoke that impression for the image’s creator or anyone else.

In a sense, whether or not we see stuff like this depends on our openness, as when I took the picture in the first place.

How deep does this go? Can we probe the unconscious with properly constructed images? Perhaps that is what things like Rorschach tests are supposed to do. Can we find out unexpected things about ourselves? Can we find ways to visualize unseen concepts, transcendent or immaterial ideas?

Some ideas of art suggest that it is about communicating ideas and feelings, but perhaps another perspective is that it is about discovering them within ourselves.