Caged Abandon
Barriers, layered, but I see through the wire to the promise ahead, the vision in the clouds.
I stand erect before the sun and sky, reaching, stretching, bursting purple out of the tangled complexities of my groundedness.
Rooted, yes, but I wave my arms in abandon. It is only a matter of time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lindagupta
Statement:
I shot this picture with my eyes closed as part of an assignment for MATX 600. I chose to display it because the textures and the symbols spoke to me, called me to the freedom promised on the other side. If I accept Mitchell’s assertion that pictures want something, I hear the cage say, “Look past me, look through me!” (73). And I do.
Parts of this image serve a relay function, not between text and image (Barthes, 155-157) but between parts of the image. The vitality of the liriope, quickened by the cage’s invitation, gathers force. It serves as a signifier of an iconic message – strength, resilience, hope. The image juxtaposes the flowering grass and the metal cage, thus, coding the image in such a way as to augment the narrative (or the narrative, to augment it).
Mitchell asks, “What do the images want from us? Where are they leading us? What is it they lack? That they are inviting us to fill in? What desires have we projected onto them, and what form do those desires take as they are projected back at us, making demands upon us, seducing us to feel and act in a specific way?” (Mitchell 25)
My answer to the image is a new mantra, “Break free, break free, break free!”
Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Carolyn Handa. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2004. 152-163.
Mitchell, W.J.T. What Do Pictures Want: The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2
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