We spoke recently about the dimensionality of a photograph and how adding color adds dimensions. The point is well taken, but is expressed in purely physical terms. Beyond its personification as wavelength adding color adds a psychological dimension as well because we associate colors with emotion.

I was attracted this morning to an interesting article on the BBC website about the color red, “How the colour red warps the mind,” by David Robson.  What attracted me to this article was a seductive photographs of lips covered with an intensive lipstick (from Getty Images).  I love the forties retro lipstick vogue currently in fashion.  But the point here is well taken: red, scarlet, crimson, or carmine lips are all shades of seduction.  Case in point, the Scarlet Whore of Babylon.

Red can symbolize seduction. It can also symbolize anger and aggression. Dobson cites some interesting studies that demonstrate a commanding edge that red can impart.  Two psychologists, Russell Hill and Robert Barton at the University of Durham, found that in the 2004 Olympics randomly assigned red clothes, for instance, in boxing and tae kwon do, gave competitors a distinct edge.  Similarly playing with red poker chips at casinos tend to make people bet more than people with blue or white chips. While men who wear red ties project authority and dominance in their workplaces.

Dobson shows a pair of photographs of a beautiful, and yes, seductive woman, in red and in blue (from Thinkstock). The images are fascinating.  I keep trying to figure out what my perception of the color effect is.  They both indicate elegance and style.  In both cases I have the sensation of smooth satin. The red one is intense, strong, and dominating.  While the blue one is soft, cool, and mellow.  I am not sure that I would characterize one as more sensual than the other, but the fact that they are evoking a different set of emotions is clear.

We already know that the perception of color is not merely a physical one but a physiological one as well.  But perception of color, and the its psychological effects, go way beyond the physiology of the firing of rods and cones in your retina.  It is a deeply seated brain function. This is what is unleashed, or harnessed depending upon your spin, when you add the dimension of color to a photograph.

While we certainly have more significant issues to worry about, we were diverted Labor Day Monday morning by the revelation that hackers had hacked the Cloud and retrieved deleted naked photographs, real and faked of several actresses and models. Hmm! I suspect that there will be much more to this in the end. And also why would people take and store photographs of themselves in compromising positions? Well really it is a right in a free society.

And I think that there is a simple and profound lesson that goes to the heart of the evil side of the internet and social media. Yes, as with anything created by humans, there is both a positive and an evil side.

We may begin our search for the evil side with the story of Lady Godiva, before she became a chocolate, and the “Peeping Tom.”  It seems that Mrs. Godiva, or as legend goes, begged her husband, ruler of the local kingdom to reduce the taxes on the suffering people.  he agrees provided she will ride naked across town.  The lady in question it seems is able to cover her more private regions with her long tresses of golden hair.  Everyone stays indoors and doesn’t look except for this voyeur, named Tom, who peers through a hole at the Lady.  He is struck blind.  This latter point is significant.  I mean so much for “blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.” Ironically Godiva’s husband was Leofric, Earl of Mercia.

So I don’t think the Godiva story really relates.The point is not fear of reprisal but civilized action. And to this point, to me this current situation relates to certain private family letters by John Adams to his wife Abigail (July 24, 1775) then attending the Congressional Congress that eventually wrote the Declaration of Independence, in which Adams derogatorily expresses his impatience with certain members of the congress.

The two events may seem unrelated; but the point is this that gentlemen (gentle-people, people with class) do not read the private mail of other gentlemen. There is an implicit rule, a social contract, for members who value a free society and its free interchange and one that should be followed by people who wish to use the internet in an unhurt-full fashion. The term free society is key here. It is not an obligation it is civilized contract. While we probably cannot stop abuse of the internet and abuse of social media, we do not have to look at the garbage, to sneer, chuckle, or chortle at it. And this is also true of stating and restating political untruths over and over again until the seem real solely by repetition.  This is not ideal moralizing. Who is ultimately denigrated when one seeks out this kind of image?

Figure 1 – An exhibit case in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien where artist models enhance traditional fossils. From the Wikimedia Commons and the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, uploaded by laika ac, under creative commons attribution license.

I have been a bit more circumspect about my short tirade yesterday concerning museum exhibits that aren’t museum exhibits, specifically not genuine photographs but merely copies of photographs.  Grrr!

It all began this last spring when my wife and I visited the “Old Slave Mart Museum” in Charleston.  It is a terribly important site of infamy to preserve, but the fact is that it is a historic site.  They have almost no artifacts, so they cover the walls with posters of facts, pictures, and first hand accounts.  Is that good or bad?  Whatever it is, it is not really a museum.  And the problem is that such material can be much better presented on a website, or a Ken Burns documentary.

In actuality, the “Old Slave Mart” is hardly the beginning.  There is a huge history of natural history museums having copies of, for instance, dinosaur skeletons; and art museums having copies of great statues.  Natural history museums, indeed all museums, serve multipurposes, and one of their major purposes is to provide students of natural history with specimen examples to see.  Similarly when it comes to sculpture, you might argue that a true copy provides the art student with the ability to really take in a three-dimensional object.

But photographs of photographs? And would you feel somehow cheated if your favorite art museum had nothing but copies?  Why not forget the galleries altogether and go straight to the gift shop and look at the postcards?

What is of course going on is that the world is changing.  No surprise! We are in the middle of a technological revolution, where the only thing stopping libraries from going totally digital is copyright laws.   Oh no, oh no, some will scream.  I need a tangible, physical book to touch and to read.  Listen I like, no love, books as much as anyone.  But there are very few cases where seeing an original carbon copy is justifies. It’s not even environmentally PC. Times they are a changin’; so get over it.

So I think that really what we are observing is the process of redefinition that libraries and museums are undergoing.  It is a metamorphosis.  As for thinly disguised photographs of photographs, the issues, but not the answers, are clear.  I look at historic images every day, and I benefit hugely from the sage commentary that accompanies these high-resolution images on the web.  Museums are not websites.  Wall space is expensive real-estate.  Certainly, there are people who would not visit the websites that I frequent, who will not watch television documentaries (for as long as television lasts), people who would not know important historical stories were it not for the museum “exhibit.”

“The fire has spread from your ships. The first of the seven wonders of the
world perishes. The library of Alexandria is in flames…. What is burning is the memory of mankind.”
George Bernard Shaw, “Caesar and Cleopatra” 1898