Australia's ABC News website published a report on February 7 entitled "Whale
kill film will strengthen legal case: Govt". The text was accompanied by a
picture with a caption that read, "The body of a minke whale and its calf are
dragged onto the whaling ship (Australian Customs Service)."
Here's the background in short: In 1986, the International Whaling Commission
banned commercial whaling. Scientific research, however, is still allowed.
Japan has killed about 7,000 minke whales in the name of research since 1986
and, as the London Guardian writes, "insists the missions are vital to a better
understanding of the mammals' migratory, feeding and
reproductive habits".
At least 30 countries and the European Union don't see it this way and, last
December, issued a written protest to which Japan partly caved in. But Japan
did say it would proceed with the slaughter of almost 1,000 other whales.
British Fisheries Minister Jonathan Shaw was outraged, "Japan's slaughter of
whales in the name of so-called science is unacceptably cruel, scientifically
unnecessary and of no economic value."
Australia
has stepped up pressure on Japan to end its whale hunt, dispatching a
surveillance vessel, the Oceanic Viking, that gathers evidence for a possible
legal challenge. In this it now has been successful, the Australian Federal
Government claims. "These photographs show the reality of whaling, the reality
of the slaughter of these animals," Customs Minister Bob Debus said. He added,
"They will help us to back the Australian government's argument in an
international court case, the details of which are still being worked out."
Japan doesn't see it this way. Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research says the
pictured pair are not a mother and her calf. "The photographs taken by the
Oceanic Viking and which major Australian newspapers published today shows two
minke whales, but they are not a mother and her calf as claimed by the media,"
the institute's director general, Minoru Morimoto, said.
So, who's right? Well, it's certain that the pictures cannot tell - for
pictures can only tell us what we already know. If I do not know that I'm
looking at minke whales, I won't see minke whales. Needless to say, the photo
cannot tell me whether I'm looking at a minke whale mother and her calf. But if
you tell me that I am (and if I'm willing)- then I will.
And then there is the information that accompanies the photo, especially the
captions. As doyen British journalist Harold Evans remarked in Pictures on a
Page:
The wordless picture story may have an aesthetic rigor
but words can enhance both emotional and cognitive values: They are not
competitive; they are complementary. They identify people and places, the first
essential. They explain relationships. They fix the time. They may elaborate on
what's happening. They can point to an elusive detail. They can attempt to
counter our irritating perversity in each drawing different, even
contradictory, meanings from the same image. They can confirm mood. And with a
single photograph only words can explain how the event occurred or what its
effect might be.
Clearly, captions can also be used
manipulatively. They are, and occasionally they lead viewers on to quite
unexpected readings. The captions of a German hobby-photographer - who achieved
some notoriety some years ago for having had his picture taken with prominent
persons - read, for example, like "should you have wondered who the guy next to
me is, it is the Pope".
Since the words that accompany pictures are of such importance, one might well
wonder whether it is pictures or whether it is words that make us see.
Consider this from Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct:
When a
male octopus spots a female, his normally grayish body suddenly becomes
striped. He swims above the female and begins caressing her with seven of his
arms. If she allows this, he will quickly reach toward her and slip his eighth
arm into her breathing tube. A series of sperm packets moves slowly through a
groove in his arm, finally to slip into the mantle cavity of the female.
These words have created images in your mind. They have made you see. What
exactly you have seen I'm not able to tell, only that there were images in your
mind that had something to do with the words that told you about the male and
the female octopus ... of this, I'm quite sure.
Now picture this, again from The Language Instinct:
Cherries
jubilee on a white suit? Wine on an altar cloth? Apply club soda immediately.
It works beautifully to remove the stains from fabrics.
I'm
pretty sure you have just seen cherries jubilee on a white suit and (presumably
red) wine stains on a (presumably white) altar cloth. Of course, I can't know
what suit you had in mind or what altar cloth or what kind of stains, so in
order to make you see the same suit, the same altar cloth and stains that I
imagine, I need to show you an illustration, a photograph for instance. Only
now can your eyes see what my eyes see. Provided of course you are willing to
see what I want you to see.
Hans Durrer has degrees in law, journalism studies and applied
linguistics from universities in Switzerland, Wales and Australia. He has
lived, worked and traveled in Southeast Asia, Cuba, Southern Africa, Central
America, Argentina, Brazil, China, Switzerland and Turkey. He is author of
Ways of Perception: On Visual and Intercultural Communication (White Lotus
Press, Bangkok, 2006).
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
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11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
Australia
has stepped up pressure on Japan to end its whale hunt, dispatching a
surveillance vessel, the Oceanic Viking, that gathers evidence for a possible
legal challenge. In this it now has been successful, the Australian Federal
Government claims. "These photographs show the reality of whaling, the reality
of the slaughter of these animals," Customs Minister Bob Debus said. He added,
"They will help us to back the Australian government's argument in an
international court case, the details of which are still being worked out."
