Warmest congratulations to Mr. Carlton Pickering and all those who comprise the largely volunteer team of Kreative Communications Network (KCN). For the past eleven years KCN, with the support of private sector sponsorship, has consistently brought us local and regional television programming that permits us to see ourselves and how we live in the Caribbean without the packaging that makes us nothing more than a tourism destination.

Caribbean Images was the theme which UWI Resident Tutor, Carla Harris-Pascal was asked to address as keynote speaker at KCN’s annual anniversary awards event at Chandeliers on Saturday 26th January 2008. I found her presentation thought-provoking and far reaching and will share most of it below. Before I actually share Ms. Harris-Pascal’s insights on Caribbean Images and the social responsibility that accompanies the promotion of images in the media, I’ll invite you to do just what she did and check out what comes at us when we surf at http://www.google.com.ai/ . Click on Images on the top right of the page and then type in CARIBBEAN and you will see what I mean about images. Do the same thing for ANGUILLA and many of us cannot find our images until page three. Now we hear from the illustrious Sister.

“…Visual images are often understood to be a fact, real the truth. However, the images we see, even when they faithfully depict what exists in a particular location at a particular time do not necessarily reflect the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There are at least three ways that images lie; through manipulation, being unrepresentative and omission.

Images are easily manipulated. Especially with today’s technology; color, lighting and air-brushing can make anything look ‘better’. So shots of the sea on the Internet are a monochromatic blue color, whereas any of us who spend any time at the beach know they’re hundred of colors in the water. Or we take a picture of the People’s Market in The Valley and heighten the colors so that the place looks like it was painted yesterday. In the tourism industry, the manipulation of a country’s image – the manipulation of the destination’s ‘packaging’ is called “Disneyfication” and describes the process of stripping a real place of its original character and repackaging it in a sanitized, brighter, ‘just painted yesterday’ format.

On the other hand an image may be in common currency but it may not be representative. For instance, though photos of chattel houses are often used on postcards to promote what is understood as quintessentially Caribbean, in many islands, thanks to hurricanes, and our love for development by concrete the chattel house no longer reflects ‘the truth’ of Caribbean lodgings.

And then there is the ‘sin’ of omission. Choosing what to leave out when capturing images is also a powerful way to edit out the truth. For instance all but one in the first twenty of the sea and beach scenes I saw on the Internet were devoid of human beings – and the single image which contained people only had European tourists on it.

Is seeing believing? – In other words, we must always question whether seeing is believing. Always ask ourselves whether the images of the Caribbean that we see whether in books, on the Internet or in Television news are portrayals of reality or the results of manipulation, omission. Are they truly representative? In other words images have bias, have agendas. Images have point-of-VIEW.
Images, Imagination; from Viewing to Vision - When I asked people about Caribbean images, most responded with visual images but a few replied with ideas. For them Caribbean images brought to mind tranquility, a laid back lifestyle, a home away from home, a place to go to and for some a place to get out of (especially for the younger people I spoke to). In other words, images are not only visual. They are also conceptual. Images are symbols. They have meaning. They stand for something beyond just what we see. For example, an image of a beach with people playing football, walking their dogs and jogging symbolizes something very different from a beach scene without people.

It is important to recognize that images are not static (they change over time), are not passive (they have agendas), are not just things to be seen (they can also be conceptual). Essentially what this means is that images run the gamut from representations of ‘reality’ at one end right down to illusion at the other extreme. But along that spectrum that stretches from the ‘what-we-can-see-reality’ to ‘illusion’ is a wide space for what I call THE POSSIBLE; something that does not yet exist, but that can be created.

Creativity comes from within us – from a place we sometimes refer to as The Imagination. We must visualize or concetulaize whatever it is we want to create. “Whatever the mind can conceive the hands can achieve”. Thus images visualization works at the level of creation or vision. Images are the building blocks for constructing how we want to see the Caribbean. In other words, our vision of the Caribbean is limited only by our capacity to imagine. This broadens our understanding of the power and usefulness of images as creative tools.
An Image Needs A Thousand Words - All media that incorporate visual elements (Internet, television, print, photography, painting, sculpture) typically are accompanied by some level of words, text or discussion. It is seldom that ‘images’ stand alone. On the Internet and in Print media the visual stimulation is heightened by text/words. On the television, the images are nearly always accompanied by audio – voices. Even photographs and paintings (for example at an exhibition or in a book usually have some sort of caption). This is because images are so flexible that whoever creates them usually feels the need to say something about their intent or explain what they tried to portray visually. This harks back to the fact that images nearly always have some sort of agenda or point of view.
The adage typically goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”. This quote privileges viewing the image and downplays the importance of words or discourse. But in my view words (and a lot of them) are fundamental to determine the intent and agenda of the images we portray of ourselves and the Caribbean, because what our minds can conceive de facto sets the creative or developmental agenda for the Caribbean and for our individual islands.

For those of you who are biblically minded, I refer you to Genesis 1:26. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness’”…I use this phrase to illustrate that any creative or envisioning process requires an author – someone to take responsibility for the creation ‘in their image and likeness’. Thus we come to the crux of the matter. Who bears the social responsibility for the images of the Caribbean we propagate? Most of us might be quick to point fingers at ‘The Media’ (meaning those faces and voices that present the news, do interviews, participate in discussion, entertain us etc.). However, I want to argue that it is us, ‘The Masses’ that have the social responsibility to determine what images are portrayed of the Caribbean in general and Anguilla in particular.
Any constituency (the Caribbean, Anguilla, your village, your household), actually has a right to determine it own destiny. We decide what image we want to portray or how we (re)present ourselves. Especially in the case of images on local television programming, we can decide how we (re)present ourselves by committing to discriminating financial support, giving time and effort, actually looking at the programs that are produced but most critically engaging in ongoing debate and discourse about the content and context of local television programming. It is a wonderful opportunity to create our island in our own image and likeness.” (Carla Harris-Pascal).
Due to technical difficulties this column could not be printed last week.

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