For all that’s been said about the form and content of photographic images, few of us are aware of how the ways we actually see, process, and remember photos helps to explain their power over us. Say what you will about the skills or “vision” of gifted picture-makers, but early on in the process of working on click! photography changes everything, I began to wonder if there weren’t some physiological and neurological reasons that could more objectively explain why photographs evoke such immediate and powerful responses from us. So, I decided to try to seek out researchers who might be able to shed some light on what happens when we look at an image. How we, literally, perceive, access and remember the information in the photographic images that we see.

Perhaps naively, I called a “brain institute” at a local university, explained what I was up to, and inquired if there was someone around who might help me test out my vague ideas about photography and perception. To my surprise, the person who answered the phone said, “Wait, here’s a scientist,” and passed the receiver over to someone who, from the sound of things, happened to be walking by when my call came in. I explained what we, at the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, were up to, and posed the first question that popped into my mind: “Is there a difference between what we see when we look at a photograph of something, as opposed to looking directly at the thing, itself?” The response I got—one I’ve heard a number of times, as we reached out to potential contributors for click!, who we invited them to think about photographic images from new perspectives—was, “Nobody’s every asked me that question before.”

Realizing that what I was asking was probably too broad and philosophically fraught, I spent some time coming up with more specific queries before I started the next round of cold calls to   more targeted researchers in the field. Luckily, one of the first people I spoke with was Jeremy Wolfe—director of the Visual Attention Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and a professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard University—who immediately got what I was after and generously explained some aspects of the work he and some of his colleagues were up to. For click!, Wolfe has written a story that describes how quickly and emphatically photographic images imprint themselves as, and in memory. The experiment he presents to illustrate the point is as startling as it is simple. See for yourself. Click here…

Most of us know what it’s like to be the subject of a photograph and to take one, to be seen and to see. But some of us, due to unusual circumstances, know more about that than others. In her  1984 autobiography, Knock Wood, Candice Bergen wrote with insight about the ways photography impacted her life, for better and worse. As one of the 1950s most frequently photographed celebrity offspring, and later as a movie and television star, much of Bergen’s success comes from knowing how to navigate a world defined and shaped by images. That’s why we invited her to be part of click!.

Bergen zeroes in on the period in her life time, starting in the late 1960s, when she decided to position herself on the other side of the camera’s lens, as a photographer. Having grown up in awe of photojournalists like Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke White, and after meeting Mary Ellen Mark in college, Bergen bought her first camera with money from modeling assignments, thinking that photography might provide her with a more direct and authentic way to engage with the world than her work as a model and young movie star did. If, for a few years, Bergen chose to describe herself as a photojournalist on her passport, it was because she felt that the “truth” of photography could help her sort out the “untruth” of filmmaking and celebrity.

Not surprisingly, and given how the media works, as Bergen’s visibility and celebrity rose so did opportunities for her to make and publish photographs. In the 1970s, and during the rise of what was called the “new journalism,” media outlets eagerly engaged contributors like Bergen, to bring their subjective perspectives to the work of recording and responding to the tumultuous cultural change of the time. Bergen was commissioned to write articles for, and publish images in magazines such as LIFE, Esquire, New York, Ladies Home Journal, and Cosmopolitan, and to produce photographic projects for The Today Show and NBC Sports.

With humor and self-deprecating honesty, Bergen describes not only how her interest in photography began, but how and why it ended, once she realized that taking pictures—which had once seemed like the best way for her to see, engage with, and record the world—had become a passionate diversion. To read her story, click here . . .