Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?

Engaging with Visual Culture

Outline of Workshop

• Why analyse visual culture?• Using Imagery• Media and Themes• Reading Images• Reading a Building• Objects and Artefacts • What Next?• Further reading

1. Why analyse visual culture?

2. Understanding how we tell stories about ourselves

and others through images and visual culture …..

3. Key skills : observation, analyses, identification,

description, explanation, argument, awareness,

self expression, oral and literacy skills …..

4. You should treat an image, artefact or building the

same as you would any written text:

INTERROGATE, QUESTION and ANALYSE.

Using Imagery

Images are relevant to all subject areas To illustrate

The focus of discussion

Provide data

Your own imagery

Evidence of process

Visual planning and brainstorming

Marketing and promotion

In your presentation

Reference

What ‘media’?• The term media in this context means ‘the agency or means of doing something

… the material or form by which something is communicated.’

[Oxford Dictionary]

Activity 1:

Now we have considered why and how you can use visual culture within your Extended Projects, in pairs jot down all the different types of media which make up visual culture that you can think of.

Photography Architecture

Fine ArtAdvertising

Clothing

Performance

Signage

Packaging

ArtefactsDigital/ Cyber

Products

MapsFlags

Spatial Design

Film/ TV

Animation

Graffiti

Media Themes

GenderRace

Religion

AuthorshipViewer

The Canon

Space and PlaceMemory

Sexuality

The Gallery

Family Narrative

Ethnicity

Who made it?

What is it (i.e. media)?

Audience?

Purpose?

Where are you viewing it?What is present in the image?

Relationship between text and image?

When was it created?

How is it displayed?

Where is it displayed?

What codes and signifiers are used to generate meaning?

How is colour used?

What is the composition?

Reading Images

What theories can you apply?

What’s its relevance socially, politically, economically?

Relationship between the image and written documents?

Activity 2: Codes & Signifiers

• In pairs discuss the symbolism or associations of the colour ‘red’

• This is a basic example. The meanings generated by this colour would also depend on the other content of the image, and the country or culture it refers to

• Do you know of any images, films, posters etc where red has been used effectively?

Activity 3: Comparing Images

Applying the questions from the Reading Images wheel, in pairs analyse how the graffiti image on the left (by an anonymous artist) has appropriated the Alfred Leete’s World War I Lord Kitchener recruitment poster (1914).

Other Visual stimuliActivity 4: Reading a Building

• There might be further questions you need to consider if you are reading different types of visual stimuli, other than 2d images,

• For instance, consider a building– What questions might you need to consider to

analyse or respond to the built environment?

Reading a Building

The ‘life cycle’ of an object …….

Object is made/ created/ ‘born’Object is distributedObject is then purchasedObject goes through a process of useObject discarded…. Thrown away/ lost/ given away/ passed on to

anotherObject begins a new life: in landfill/ recycled/in

someone else’s property/ waiting to be purchased …..

The ‘life cycle’ of an object ...

For an interesting example of the life cycle of an object, watch the 18min film Plastic Bag, directed by Ramin Bahrani (2009). The film can be found on YouTube and Futurestates.tv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDBtCb61Sd4,

or

http://www.futurestates.tv/episodes/plastic-bag

Objects and ArtefactsQuestions:

• What is it? • Where is it from?• What is its age?• What is it made of?• What is its purpose?• What visual details are there?• What does it feel like? 

What Next?

• Use the window as a frame – what is the image in that frame?

• Analyse the front page of a newspaper or magazine• Evaluate an advertising billboard• Examine a company website• Respond to a personal photograph• Assess the layout and design of a favourite shop• Record the images and objects on your street• Consider the design of food packaging

Further Reading Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage, 1993.

Berger, John, Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Fernie, Eric, ed, Art History and its Methods: A Critical Anthology. London: Phaidon, 1995.

Honour, Hugh, Fleming, John, eds, A World History of Art. London: Laurence King, 2009.

Howells, Richard, Visual Culture: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003.

Pearce, Susan M, ed, Interpreting Objects and Collections. London: Routledge, 1994.

Pointon, Marcia, History of Art: A Student’s Handbook. London: Routledge, 2002.

Laneyrie-Dagen, Nadeije, How to Read Paintings. Edinburgh: Chambers, 2004.