"All my changes of place figure on principle in a corner of my landscape; they are carried over onto the map of the visible. Everything I see is on principle within my reach, at least within reach of my sight, and is marked upon the map of the 'I can.' Each of the two maps is complete. The visible world and the world of my motor projects are both total parts of the same Being...This extraordinary overlapping, which we never give enough thought to, forbids us to conceive of vision as an operation of thought that would set up before the mind a picture of a representatin of the world, a world of immanence and of ideality. Immersed in the visible by his body, itself visible, the see-er does not appropriate what he sees, he merely approaches it by looking, he opens onto the world. And for its part, that world of which he is a part is not in itself, or matter."
Johnson, Galen A. Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting (Spep). Northwestern University Press, 1994. pp. 124
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We are "connected" to the world through what is visible to us. This is an immense statement! We are small in this universe, but the sensation of touching through seeing gives visual storytelling, abstract or generic, tremendous amounts of power.
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