In 'The House' the power Argument here is that of the Victor or the oppressor.

The wealthy middle class European women, living in her comfortable environment. Collecting trophies of those she has excluded from her mental definition of mankind. The eye of her mind and the mental image or feeling has transformed the starving into the starving state no more.

Within her sick and twisted mind she believes that she is serving humanity by removing the pain and suffering of those who can not improve their own situation.

The foil in the picture gives a glimpse of power, while death and dying as well as pain and sufferance is draping the living room of this house of horror. This could possibly be the weapon used taking her victims from the living to the dying.

The 'Crimes of the Mind,' not being fact or fiction but just the image of total distortion of the mind. The continuous bombardment by the media, these images from the 'news' should be renamed the 'sadness'.

How can the consistent acts against one another of murder, rape and robbery ever be considered news? The eye of the mind needs to be tenderised and conditioned convincing our minds it is true. 'Brian told me – The Nine Nightly News'.

In this media system of reporting the news comes the world of propaganda. Noam Chomsky wrote an article called, Lies of the Times, May 1992. 'Media critique has generally focused on how the news and opinion sections ensure right thinking.' As he wrote the article Chomsky is talking about the way news and information is fed to our minds. Consistently feeding the same or similar stories night after night. Chomsky finishes off his article with this quote about the media industry. 'If these goals are achieved, the propaganda system will have done its duty.'

When considering 'The Crimes of the Mind', through the eye the images cause the mind to open and close at different stages.

This can be seen when the news generates public and personal feeling towards a report of a crime or issue but soon after the mind closes the eye to process data contained within the mind.

Crimes of the Mind are showing here in two stages, the viewing of the images used to develop the whole picture. Then the distortion and blurred image, referring to the unconscious mind that tries to justify everything that happens. While not personalising the crime or the time. To return to James Adams book, The Care and Feeding of Ideas. We need to consider how he feels our mental perception works. 'Actually, I think I was just very lucky, without any knowing it the ideas were already in my head, and they seemed to come together in one fell swoop.'

This does capsulise the theory behind the 'Crimes of the Mind'

Out of the darkest corner of our minds comes the confused images, blurred with the girl in the centre, she had to interpret her thoughts and then justify then as a mental judge and jury.

Then justifying her reaction to the images and news around her, it is not my fault.

David Chambers came to the rescue of the girl in the picture with his book, Is Seeing Believing? 'One useful generalisation to keep in mind is that the process we call seeing involves constant interpretation.'

Now moving away from the propaganda of the media and coming more to reality.

We can see how realism verses socialism or how the physical mind of one can become the lifestyle of others. Pieter Breughel during his lifetime which spanned from 1525 – 1569. Demonstrated that life was not always simple. Then to coin a term of George Bernard Shaw's famous quote, 'Life was not meant to be easy.'

We can see in Breughel's picture above the skeletons and corpses as well as the starving dog feeding off the dead lady, this paints a sad and horrific scene for mankind. How did we survive?

Did these images have a long-term effect on the mind of the witnesses, or were these images seen then packed away like James Adams claimed for later reference.

Then addressing the issue of the impact of images. We could write forever on this one topic. Referring to thousands of writers and academics. The scope was reduced to one man. This being Robert H McKim in his book, Thinking Visually.

Page ninety-six McKim addresses the issue, what is a mental image? 'A mental image, unlike a perceptual image' Here McKim is starting to address how the mind receives and processes the images in our day to day life. McKim continues to claim that many images can still be seen 'even with your eyes closed.'

He has a similar theory to the eye of the mind as to does James Adams. McKim stretches the theory beyond the optical senses and engages the audio sense, bringing the ear of the mind into the argument. McKim argues that all mankind experiences dreams and mental images and he also talks about the ability to receive clear images in the form of a daydream.

McKim offers some great points of view about why these images fail to have a long-term mental effect on the minds of the viewers. He claims, 'Approximately one-sixth of a normal group of people do not use visual images in their thinking unless obliged to do so. Even then, their mind's eye is almost blind.'

This reinforces the need for long term consumption of images before the viewers will have a long term or lasting effect by what is seen. Again McKim's theory and this essay supports the argument brought forward by Noam Chomsky in his article, The Propaganda System, Lies of our Times.

What are the real differences between Pieter Breughel's painting and that of 'The House' and the 'Crimes of the Mind?'

(1) Triumph of Death. Hanging now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
(2) The House.
(3) Crimes of the Mind.

Breughel's work still survives for four centuries hanging in a public museum. Now as we applied Noam Chomsky's theory of the propaganda system, we need to consider the effect of the mind.

Impact of Images.
Consider Triumph of Death.

1. 10,000 viewers seen the painting hanging in the museum in Vienna.
2. One viewer seen the painting 10,000 times in the museum.


Clearly under the normal viewing ten thousand people should take away a memory of the painting but retain little or no psychological effect. Then consider the one viewer that seen the Triumph of Death, ten thousands times in the museum. This could easily start developing a lasting effect on their mind. Which could possibly lead to a mental response to the painting.

To conclude one needs to consider the images developed for Photodocumentation ll and then somehow justify their existence within academic context. James Adams offers a thought that is about the way we think. Especially, the girl on the front of 'Crimes of the Mind'. Adams wrote, 'There is perhaps a more gut-level reason why we intend not to be as concern with unconscious thinking as we should. It seems' less human than conscious thinking.'

These images were produced to show that the world's is not all black and white, rich or poor. Somewhere hidden under the bed sheets of life are people that these images do turn to reality.

For decades we here in Australia we have seen ourselves as a distant spectator to the global problems, the destruction of Europe time and time again. Consider the raging crime through the Americas, from north to south.

Our borderless country often sees itself protected from these global problems and crimes, while living what is now known as the life of a lie. In Noam Chomsky's article 'The Propaganda System' - The Lies of our Times we can attach this saying now to our nation.

Port Arthur in 1996 and Martin Bryant, the English hitch hikers with Ivan Milatt in the Southern Highlands of NSW from 1980s to 1990s. Then came the massacre at Stratfield Mall in 1997. Consider these images and then ask yourself, whose lies are we living?

Has our media and movie industries removed the crimes of the world from our sub conscious and planted them clearly into the conscious state and mind of some.

Did Bryant get fed these crimes of reality, was Milatt conditioned by the thoughts of a good movie producer. The Stratfield murderer while killed by police it was reported by his mother that he was living out a crime of the mind.

Different places and difference faces but the result at his hand was the same.

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Reference List.

Adams, James: The Care and Feeling of Ideas: A guide to encourage creativity, 1986, Addision-Wesley Publishing Company Inc, New York,

Berger, John, The Ways of Seeing, Pieter Breughel painting, Triumph of Death, 1983, Penguin Books Limited, Middlesex, England.

Chambers, David, Is Seeing Believing, 1984, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia.

Chomsky, Noam: Lies of the Times, May 1992,

McKim, Robert H, Thinking Visually, 1980, Dale Seymour Publications, California, USA.