Exploring Unseen Violence in the Picture Books of Jeannie Baker

Abstract

This article presents an ecocritical reading of two textless picture books, also considered silent books or wordless books and one picture book. In the close reading of Belonging, Window, and The Hidden Forest by Jeannie Baker, an Australian visual artist and filmmaker, the article turns to theories about the act of witnessing to interrogate its relation to the acts of reading and writing. Moving from the literary to the visual, witnessing theories in literature places the human subject in a position of responsibility. In other words, by just seeing, a person acknowledges the loss or exploitation they witness and their role as agents. Regarding the ecological catastrophes and climate crises, witnessing the changes in the environment due to urban sprawl, heavy industrialization, and human-related exploitations spreads over time and space, making it difficult to realize the extent of the loss. Jeannie Baker’s books introduce the concept of subjectivity into the discussion, as changes in the environment occur because of human actions, making it necessary to reconsider one’s relation to the environment and the subjectivities of the nonhuman as well. In the two textless books, Belonging and Window, the change the reader witnesses on the double-page spreads happens very slowly and subtly. The human subject who has already lost connection with nature and is unaware of the human impact on the environment encounters their destructive humanity in The Hidden Forest. Baker’s drawings and collages place the reader in the subject position, making it necessary to think of oneself as the fictional character through the act of witnessing.