Entry 4

Reading a picture is something much less literal than the word "reading" implies. When someone reads a book, they interpret the words literal meaning, and then their other implications, whereas, with an image there is no implicit literal definition to be found. The only way to really read a picture is to try and describe the feeling that it gives you when you look at it. My favorite example of this is a picture of a vase of flowers by Vincent Van Gogh. About a year ago I found a print of this painting sitting in a "free stuff" bin at a record store. I picked it up because I thought it was appeasing to look at, not really anything crazy going on, just some flowers sitting on a table. I took it home and put it on the back of the door to my room. Because of this, I end up staring at it quite a lot. It is often one of the first things I see in the morning and the last thing I see before I go to sleep, because it is directly opposite my bed. The feeling that this picture gives me is a really calming one. I think that this is because it is almost a palate cleanser of sorts, in that, it doesn't really have any hidden meaning or deep concept, it is just a really simple really pretty vase, with some nice flowers in it, sitting on a table doing absolutely nothing. The flowers aren't extremely life like, in fact I have observed that if you look closely they don't even look that much like flowers. They aren't too abstract either, just detailed enough for you to understand that they are just flowers, and very nice looking flowers at that. I think that the real message that I get from reading this image is that even when I get confused or feel uncertain about things, I can kind of take comfort in the fact that not everything g is unclear, and that sometimes flowers are just flowers.