Thinking Critically Using Visual Thinking

There is a quotation I love that goes:

"All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you weren't noticing, which makes you see something that isn't even visible." Norman McClean, from "A River Runs Through It"

I apply this to much of what I do in terms of my own life and in terms of poetry and photography both of which are searches for the invisible. The art of "seeing" is a search to find what it is that you never noticed. This happens to me all the time. I can be driving down the same street at the same time every day to and from work for weeks, months, and even years, then one day, I will look and notice something that wasn't there until I noticed it. This is when I stop the car, get out, take out my note pad and my camera and set up my tripod and I record in words what I am seeing and how I am seeing it and when and where noting the light and shadows, the f-stop and the shutter speed and the ISO and if I had to use exposure compensation. Then, when I get home, I download the raw files and start working on them in Aperture or Photoshop and making corrections and changes and saving versions in color and black and white. Then I make a back up disc to a DVD and I upload the keeper images to my online databank and to my website for backup. And I make a print, finally. that is the final product. I believe that the photograph is now the print, printed on paper and kept in digital file form online.

A year later, I will pull down the raw file from the DVD or from my online data storage, and look again. When this happens I begin to see things that I never noticed and the experience of "seeing" happens all over again. I've been doing this lately because I have a show coming up of all my Paterson work in color and black and white, over twenty years worth. And I am amazed that I had image files of things that I put aside and never thought much of until I got to "see" them again for the first time.

How does this fit with critical thinking? Well, for one, critical thinking does not mean searching for one right answer. There may be many answers. Your best answers are those that analyze and articulate your responses in light of supporting evidence. This is critical thinking.

So my critical thinking is going to be different than your critical thinking, because my answers have to answer for who I am.

How we view ourselves in relation to the world around us is very complex. We probably have an image of who we are that we carry within ourselves most of the time, but we are likely to project a different personality according to the situations (home, work, school, among friends, etc.) in which we find ourselves. Depending on our relationships with them, the people we know are also likely to describe us very differently. Our families, friends, casual acquaintances, employers, and teachers may experience who we are in very different ways.

Connecting through experience:

The self images we carry with us into adulthood may be formed during childhood. Try to remember how you felt about yourself as a child and compare that self-image with how you see yourself now.

For this first assignment, I ask all of you to post a self-portrait in words and pictures. Upload a photograph that is a self-portrait meaning that it contains you in some way but you can't be in the photograph. It can be your shoes and clothes hanging in your closet and you can describe the clothes and the items in the closet that connect you to who you are. It could be your car, the interior of the car, all the things in it and what they mean to you. It could be your bedroom, your desk, the things on your wall and why they are there...what do they mean to you. How are they you?

After you upload a self-portrait image in jpeg format, you must write two fully developed paragraphs. In the first paragraph, describe what you see. Just list what is in the photograph and tell us what it is and what it is like, the colors, etc. Describe what what is there....this is a picture in words. The second paragraph is very different. This is what you don't see. And this is the Norman McClean quotation from the top of this page, noticing something that you didn't notice because it is invisible but making it noticeable. This paragraph is about how you feel about what you see. What feelings do you have when you look at the self-portrait of your room, car, clothes, bed, etc? What emotions do you attach to these items. Do they have meaning? How important are they? Why do you have them? How do they make you feel? Are you saddened by the things around you? Are you comforted? Do they make you remember people and places and times in your life?

Give it your best shot....

Prof H