Pictures in our heads
What do you see in these pictures?
I asked this question to over a 100 people on the street and the answers were related almost always with the same concepts: race or gender
When we see the skin of white people painted black, why do we think about race?
When we see a female body, its anatomy and shapes, why do we think about gender?
If these photographs were of men painted in any other color we would rather think about the light of the photography, in its composition, in the shape of the bodies. But the ideas of gender or race would not come to our head right away.
It could be argued that we contemplate on the pictures race and gender because black and women have been precisely the race and the gender that have fought for equality through out the history. Therefor that would explain that what we see in the pictures we see it more in our heads than with our eyes.
Are these unconscious biases? Is the history about the struggle for equality that has unconsciously created us these prejudices?
I asked this question to over a 100 people on the street and the answers were related almost always with the same concepts: race or gender
When we see the skin of white people painted black, why do we think about race?
When we see a female body, its anatomy and shapes, why do we think about gender?
If these photographs were of men painted in any other color we would rather think about the light of the photography, in its composition, in the shape of the bodies. But the ideas of gender or race would not come to our head right away.
It could be argued that we contemplate on the pictures race and gender because black and women have been precisely the race and the gender that have fought for equality through out the history. Therefor that would explain that what we see in the pictures we see it more in our heads than with our eyes.
Are these unconscious biases? Is the history about the struggle for equality that has unconsciously created us these prejudices?
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