The Stranger | Image check

Sheyla Zandonai

We live in a society and in times in which the power of images cannot be underestimated. In fact, this is the nature of images. They have an impact, an aura, a presence. We register them sometimes without knowing well their origin or meaning. These days too, they travel too soon too fast, leaving a first impression that may be equivocal. Images circulating with little or no filter can be powerful and empowering though. But there is often more to the image than the image itself.
People who have put some thought into the field of visual culture, a discipline I teach, are skeptical about commonsensical notions that the image is overriding in our world today. No doubt, we are surrounded by them, owing mostly to round-the-clock access to internet on professional and personal devices. A picture is worth a thousand words as the saying goes, but text and audio continue, in many cases, to be imperative in helping us get the full picture, so to speak. Furthermore, context is important. It allows us to properly interpret what we see.
Now image can be a very broad concept – the photograph, the moving picture, the painting. In the field of visual studies, the image ranges from different forms of artistic expression to mass media. Understandably, the first “image” that comes to mind is something that accompanies and illustrates the news on a daily basis, either online or in print. It is close to us and our reality; it is accessible. With a few exceptions, these are often quite informative, and yet never neutral: they stand between objective and subjective depiction, reflected in the choice of topic, angle or color, to name a few aspects.
We also project onto other people what we see or want to see in them. Cultural representations of the “other,” commonly referred to as stereotypes, should not be “read” as purely prejudiced. They tell us something about the other – although in what is often quite a reductive manner – as well as something about the one creating the image, revealing hierarchies of value, power plays and negotiations of identity.
Other types of images, such as those that embody memories, help us recollect the past, while pictorial projections, like city plans, remain particularly important to informing people’s view of their place on earth. These two representations are particularly relevant in Macau’s context, in which casino urbanism and a bullying form of tourism hijack the city’s public spaces to the point of a subtle but existing disquiet.
Curiously enough, and although the city keeps changing for better or worse, such images rendering what Macau’s urban future as part of the Greater Bay Area may look like are rather scarce in daily life. But we may be getting closer to catching a glimpse of it when the government reveals the city’s master plan, which Hong Kong-based Ove Arup & Partners were commissioned to do, for public consultation, perhaps before the end of the year.
Until then, there is an image contrast in Macau’s ever-changing landscape that is worth pointing out, which concerns the Zone C landfill currently under development north of Taipa. Vessels are working day and night to fill the shallow waters with sand, which is to be expected. But the official representation shown in previous maps renders the landfill much smaller than what the actual work looks like as of today, as it is taking a big chunk of the waterway between the peninsula and its southern island. Images also need to be checked as facts do. Sheyla Zandonai