The art historian James Elkins writes about seeing. He challenges a number of taken-for-granted ideas about sight and vision. Here are three of his big ideas:

(1) Elkins says that a lot of what we call seeing is actually not-seeing – we screen out much that is actually  in our scope of vision, because we are unable to process the sheer amount of available visual  information. So as we see, we always simultaneously not-see. We are both sighted and blind at the same time.

(2) Elkins suggests that seeing is not simply what happens in the brain ‘inside ‘ us – it is what happens in between our eyes and objects. And this is not empty space but is actually light. Light joins our eyes and the object we are ‘seeing’. We are not separated from the objects we are looking at but are joined to them by and through light.

(3) Elkins maintains that objects look at us. A knife says pick me up. A cookie says eat me. An unused box reminds us of things we haven’t done. The object can resist being noticed, or invite us to notice it.

This is a challenging idea and Elkins proposes a reason for this:

” A psychoanalyst might say that we need to believe that vision is a one-way street and that objects are just the evasive recipients of our gaze in order to maintain the conviction that we are in control of our vision and ourselves. If I think of the world in the ordinary way I am  reassured. Everything is mine to command: if I want to see a movie I go and see it. if I want to look at my cat, I look at her. But this implies something darker: that if I resist the idea that objects look back at me and that I am tangled in a web of seeing, then I am also resisting the possibility that I may not be the autonomous, independent, stable self that I claim I am. I may not be coming to terms with the thought that I need these reciprocal gazes in order to go out and be myself.”  (p. 74)

Elkins, James (1996) The object stares back. San Diego: Harvest