We live in a visual world. We are surrounded by increasingly sophisticated visual images. But unless we are taught how to read them, we run the risk of remaining visually illiterate. This is something that none of us can afford in the modern world.
During our lives, we are usually taught how to read the printed word. We are shown how sentences are made up of grammatical units. We learn how to read as well as write. Things are much less straightforward in the visual world. Often, we are left on our own when it comes to figuring out what a visual image means.
That is what this book is about. This is a book that explores how meaning is both made and transmitted in the visual world. It seeks not simple solutions to particular and individual images. Rather, it aims to show us ways of looking for ourselves so that we will be able to tackle any visual text — whether it is a drawing, a painting, a photograph, a film, an advertisement, a television programme or a new media text — and be able to start getting to grips with both what it means and how that meaning is communicated, even how some images give away far more in meaning than their authors ever consciously intended.
Those of us who are already creatively involved in the visual arts, or are planning a professional career in the media or communications industries, will need little convincing of the need for visual literacy. Creatively, we need to be able to 'read' as well as 'write', to learn how others have communicated visually in order, in turn, to learn from them. Further, we need to know how others will read our work, be they consumers, clients or critics. We need to be practically accomplished in these skills in order to make a living from them.
Long before photography, it was usual for artists to paint battles — usually to the gratification of the winning side. Later, official war artists would sketch or paint on location, and then their work would be engraved for newspaper reproduction. With photojournalism, people began to see what war actually looked like for the first time. Particular images began to take on iconic significance.
The pictures that depict our world are not necessarily moving pictures, despite the pre-eminence of television, cinema and related media. Newspaper and magazine photographs remain important, and have a 'fixity' that gives them more staying power than a fleeting, moving image. Just as in television, however, the images are by no means secondary to the words. Newspaper editors know this: the lead picture will always be above the front-page fold so that it attracts our attention on the news-stand. One hardly needs to stress the importance of the cover photograph of a magazine, no matter how fashionable or weighty its content.
Visual images, however, are by no means limited to the news media. They surround us every day in advertising, on packaging, on banknotes and on CD covers. They all have something to say, whether they are as informal as family snapshots or as imposing as art gallery canvases.
Try to imagine a world without visual culture. It is impossible. If we doubt this, we should just close our eyes for half an hour, or (on the other hand) walking down the street making a mental note of every form of visual communication that we see. Imagine, next, the same brief walk without the visual images.
This book was going to be all about art history, but traditional history of art gets little attention in it. But this book aims to open ones eyes and urge them to not be visually illiterate.
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