On Selective Attention

All of life is about selective attention. People will look where they want to look. Even if they look at something that they think is interesting, their selective attention is directing it elsewhere. It's the "peripherique" idea: they're looking at the frame because someone said something about the frame and they're looking at that and not seeing what's inside the frame--even though they might see it peripherally.

Say you're a photojournalist and you decided that you wanted to do some staged photography because all the photography that you had been doing is covering street protests. You could stage mock protests cinemaphotographically, blocking the actors for a cinematic tableau or "tableau vivant". You could direct them to look in a certain direction as something was happening in real-time as staged selective attention a la Jeff Wall or Gregory Crewdson. It could be done so convincingly that the viewer would feel the same emotion as an un-staged photo. This has always been why film (reel life) is like real life.

 Riff 12/27/2023 (From Some December)