The Natural Attitide and Shelby Lee Adams

While reading “The natural attitude” by Norman Bryson it was easy to see that the chapter is very relative to what we are trying to figure out. What we are trying to figure out is whether or not images can really be considered real. The role of art can be seen as giving reality itself, but what is really true? As a culture, it seems like western society embraces the fact that images are just a substitute for reality. We settle for an image if we cannot experience the real thing. Yet at the same time, we are very judgmental about what art is and what it means. Bryson forces us to ask ourselves whether or not images are simply just a reflection back of what reality is.

Images have been around throughout history and have been seen as reflections of the world, but images also shape the world. They shape the world because we rely on images to produce reality. The realities images produce though are not always true. As people, we forget to look at what is really in the image, and we construct false ideas in our minds about where the images came from. We look at images and judge what is in the pictures for example the clothes someone is wearing and it gives us a superficial surface change. Photographs are an expression of the world that shows what is out there, that something may have happened at one time and that’s the way it was. Images though are something that is ever-changing, just like reality.

A real example of a debate over the reality is the work of Shelby Lee Adams. As a photographer, he has spent most of his life and career working on Appalachian family life photography. Debates have been made over whether or not he has depicted the Appalachia family life in the correct way. Some people believe that he has captured how the Appalachian people have lived their life and still live it, while other believes that he has made these photographs to look like something else that never happened. Imagery and photography is so hard to judge about whether or not it is true or real because only the people behind the lens or picture are the only ones who really felt and experienced it. Bryson asks a very challenging question of whether images capture reality, and it may never be able to be answered fairly.