The heedless perception
It is night. The world is dark, a pitch black night. You are asleep. Your heart is beating. Your lungs are filtering oxygen. Sounds penetrate you unconsciously. You perceive tingling smells. You feel the warmth of your blankets.
The human senses are so basic. We often don't even realize that they guide us through the world. We see every moment, but hardly realize it. We hear every moment, but we barely realize it. We smell every moment, but we barely realize it.
We feel, but we barely realize it. Everything we do is almost careless. We are busier with notions of making money than with the reality of everyday life: without seeing we bang against the wall, without hearing we don't know which direction to go, without feeling we burn in the sunlight, without...
The lungs are formed in the first four weeks of embryonic development. Skin develops from the same cell structure. Lungs and skin have more in common than many people know. Eyes = seeing. Ears = listening. Lungs = breathing. Skin = feeling.
By touch
Judith D. van Meeuwen, exhibition maker Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, wrote the foreword:
"Man's eyesight is mediocre, smells poor, hearing is defective, taste is not great and the sense of touch is downright abominable. The mother of the Bible figure Jacob made sleeves out of the skin of two goats' heads, which Jacob pulled over his arms, thus deceiving his blind father, who thought he was blessing his firstborn son Esau with the firstborn rights. A fine early example of our underdeveloped capacity for touch. (...) In Ron Jagers' photography you see a reflection of these two systems of touch. It touches - though not really tangibly but through seeing - the emotional system. The depicted 'facts' of location, portrayed people and situations evoke a strong - sometimes bygone - world. But more than that, the photographs are an imprint of the artist's posterior insula; imbued with that pure socially binding touch, without frills.