Chapter 6

VISUAL CRITICS

Images have often been considered mere illustrations for what was written. But it is slowly starting to change thanks to visual critics who started developing visual study and analysis.

What does it mean to be a critic?

Such critics include Lodge who wrote that "Analysis reveals the person making the analysis—not really the piece itself.”

Lester, Paul Martin. Visual Communication: Images with Messages 7th Edition . Kindle Edition.

David Lodge's Analytical Perspectives

Lodge came up with 14 different analytical perspectives: allegorical, archetypal, biographical, Christian, ethical, existentialist, Freudian, historical, Jungian, Marxism, mythical, phenomenological, rhetorical, and structural.

It is important for both the producer and the critic of images to know the audience and understand its culture and its symbols.

Lester, Paul Martin. Visual Communication: Images with Messages 7th Edition . Kindle Edition.

David Perlmutter's Analytical Perspectives

David Perlmutter came up with 8 different analytical perspectives:

- Production: How the image was produced

- Content identification: What is in the image and the story it tells

- Functional: What the context is

- Expressional: What emotions are conveyed

- Figurative: What symbols are used and how they fit the culture

- Rhetorical-moral: What the justification are for the image

- Societal: How the image reflects the culture and time

- Comparative: How the image compares with previous works.

Sontag, Berger, & Postmodernist critics

Postmodernist critics see photography as something that should not be trusted, because it either shows too much or not enough, so according to them, it shows nothing at all.

They see photography as a tool for the - political, cultural, mediatic - elites to control the masses, as suggested by this quotes from Susan Sontag:

"A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amount of entertainment in order o stimulate buying and anesthetize the injuries of class, race, and sex. [...] Camera define reqlity in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. Social change is replaced by the change in images. The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. The narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the unlimited production and consumption of images."

Sontag, S. (1977). On Photography. Penguin Books. pp. 178-179.

The Cruel Radiance, Susie Linfield

Reaction to the postmodernist critics:

- Is it such a bad thing to approach photographs through emotions?

- Photography does not show everything, but isn't it our job to fill the gaps?

- Why do we (sometimes) find pleasure in seeing images of suffering?

- Photography teaches about our failure to comprehend humans.

Other view on the the "compassion fatigue":

"It implies that a golden age existed in which people throughout the world responded with empathy, generosity, and saving action when confronted with the suffering of others. But when, I wonder, did this utopia exist? The early twentieth century? The nineteenth century, the eighteenth, or perhaps the twelfth or ninth? Where and when can we find it—and the good Samaritans who presumably used to populate our globe?"

Lifield, S. (2012). The Cruel Radiance. The University of Chicago Press. p. 46

Preliminary Analysis

There are 9 preliminary steps that you need to take before you actually jump into a visual analysis.

It is a tedious work, but it will help you give the best analysis. With time, you will be able to do it faster and almost automatically.

1. Inventory List

List everything that you can see in the image - whether people, animals, vegetation, and so on. You can even imagine a grid in order to consider every detail the picture has to offer. It is a tedious work, but it is necessary to make sure you see the "whole picture."

2. Composition

You can look at the camera angle for this preliminary step. You can use this website to help you:

https://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/

3. Visual Cues

This is the occasion to put Chapter 2 into practice by analyzing the visual cues of color, form, depth and movement in the image:

https://prezi.com/view/bjgRco1sjPTeOFnulKbQ/

4. Gestalt Laws

This is the occasion to put Chapter 3 into practice by analyzing the gestalt laws of similarity, proximity, continuation and common fate in the image:

https://prezi.com/view/xxDpD2UEeVN6yVZY0ZT8/

5. Semiotic Signs

This is the occasion to put Chapter 3 into practice by analyzing the semiotics signs of icon, index, and symbol in the image:

https://prezi.com/view/xxDpD2UEeVN6yVZY0ZT8/

6. Semiotic Codes

This is the occasion to put Chapter 3 into practice by analyzing the semiotics codes of metonymy, analogy, displaced, and condensed codes in the image:

https://prezi.com/view/xxDpD2UEeVN6yVZY0ZT8/

7. Cognitive Elements

This is the occasion to put Chapter 3 into practice by analyzing the semiotics codes of metonymy, analogy, displaced, and condensed codes in the image:

https://prezi.com/view/xxDpD2UEeVN6yVZY0ZT8/

8. Purpose of the Work

Why do you think the picture was made? What was the goal? What is it trying to convey? You can put the chapter on visual persuasion into practice:

https://prezi.com/view/ooYt0IS6Uqum0bxGv4D8/

9. Image Aesthetics

Is this image compelling? Does it make you want to keep watching or turn away? Do you want to see more of the author's work?

*Breakfast cereal test*

Six perspectives

"Analytical approaches, although time-consuming, are valuable because they help you notice the smallest details that make up an image, which often leads to greater, universal truths. Meaning/perceiving should be the goal of any type of visual analysis—whether for personal, professional, or cultural reasons. The process also requires that you become familiar with the biography of an artist, the details of her culture and her life that led to the picture’s creation."

Lester, Paul Martin. Visual Communication: Images with Messages 7th Edition . Kindle Edition.

Personal Perspective

This is your own personal and subjective point of view of the image, whether you like or not, find it interesting or not. It is okay to include your opinion in your analysis, but make sure to also set it aside for the next steps in order to have a thorough analysis.

Historical Perspective

It is important to put the image back into its historical context and understand the time it was made in order to better understand its meaning and its symbols.

Technical Perspective

This perspective relates to the quality of the image - regardless of your subjective opinion of it. It asks about the techniques that were used (still/moving images, painting, graphic design) and whether it looks like a low- or high-budget creation.

Ethical Perspective

“Photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention. […] The person who intervenes cannot record; the person who is recording cannot intervene” (Sontag, 2008,

36 pp. 11-12).

NPPA's code of ethics:

https://nppa.org/code-ethics

Ethics: Golden Rule

Do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you. It is the reason why photographs of people jumping off the World Trade Center created controversy when they were published - it was too harsh for the family to see these images and it was deemed heartless.

Ethics: Hedonism

This means publishing for your own selfish reasons - money, award, aesthetic pleasure. Paparazzi are the best examples of this philosophy.

Ethics: Golden Mean

This is the middle path between two extremes. You need an image that attract attention, yet, it should not be too shocking for example.

Ethics: Categorical Imperative

You do your job as a visual professional without questions regardless of the circumstances.

Ethics: Utilitarianism

You do your job as a visual professional for the "greater good."

Ethics: Veil of Ignorance

Imagine yourself in the shoes of the person you are photographing/filming/painting and ask yourself whether you would like to be treated with such respect.

Cultural Perspective

Cultural analysis of a picture involves identifying the symbols and metaphors used in an image and determining their meaning for the society as a whole. Symbolism may be analyzed through the picture’s use of heroes and villains, by the form of its narrative structure, by the style of the artwork, by the use of words that accompany the image, and by the attitudes about the subjects and the culture communicated by the visual artist. The cultural perspective is closely related to the semiotics approach.

Lester, Paul Martin. Visual Communication: Images with Messages 7th Edition . Kindle Edition.

Critical Perspective

This perspective combines all the previous ones to conclude the meaning of the image based on who made it, who is in it, how it was made, for what purpose, and what lessons it holds.