Verified Document

Visual Communication Term Paper

¶ … Visual Culture: The Reader. Edited by Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall. New York: Sage, 2002. According to Victor Burgin's rendition of photography, how do photography and text relate to one another?

Photography and text never simply stand beside one another. Rather, the two exist in dialogue. Burgin suggests that when a text and a photograph exist together, they create a new text that stands apart from the two, original products -- in other words, even if the two appear to be complementary on the surface, the two fused together create a new text and message for the reader of the photograph and text, a reader who is apprehending the photograph and the words simultaneously.

For Burgin, a photograph is a text in and of itself -- although an apparently frozen image, it too tells a story. Words create images in everyone's mind, but the words are different for every reader of a verbal text alone. For the reader of a photograph, the image is the same for the viewer's eyes, but the tone and texture of the tale told by the image, although quite influenced by the photographer's intent and composition, will vary for every consumer of the image. The dialogue of text and photograph, although it might attempt to clarify the verbal and visual text of a story or a moment in time, only creates different levels, depths, and possibilities of subjective meaning.

What does Roland Barthes mean by "a civilization...

We live, says Barthes, in a society that is obsessed with the intellectual significance of writing. We are a verbal, recorded society. Yet the rhetoric of the image also suggests that we live in a civilization of images, where, like words, images possess connotative as well as denotative meaning. A word's denotation is its literal meaning. A words connotation is its meaning as it is located in culture. Words are specific and subject in their denotations of grammar in language, just as images are subject to the physical constraints of vision in their denotative meaning. However, words with similar denotations can have very different connotations, and likewise with images.
Barthes' essay "The Rhetoric of the Image" specifically centers on how word-and-images possess fused together, a unified kind of connotation that the word or the image would not possess alone. An image of pasta, for instance, with Italian words above the pasta might have the denotative meaning merely of the words in Italian, but the Italian quality conveyed in the connotation might be far richer, that of home, exoticism, and true authenticity of the food and experience of eating the food.…

Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Visual Communications the Character of
Words: 783 Length: 3 Document Type: Research Paper

James Bond is presently one of the principal sexual concepts that the film puts across. Daniel Craig's Bond is no longer seen as a very effective killing tool, as it shown as an object of admiration. Craig's physical appearance is no longer a crime deterrent, as it is actually used with the purpose of impressing viewers. This Bond is no longer yelling, as he speaks in a gentle voice and

Visual Rhetoric Visual Communication the
Words: 1174 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

In the cover photo, Oogy seems to be looking directly at the viewer. His gaze is strong yet steady and calm. One expects a pit bull to look threatening, but with Oogy's missing ear and crooked mouth, he does not look threatening at all. His direct gaze immediately engages the viewer and invites empathy. Our response is a purely emotional one. The cover photograph is hard to look at because

Visual Communication Please Assign This Order To:
Words: 1063 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

Visual Communication please assign this order to: hisdudeness contact directly confusion order requirements . Final Project The purpose project provide opportunity student demonstrate understanding ability apply content developing producing a visual project reflects effective visual communication. Cartoon Symbols Typography In order to be able to pass a message across using visual communication or visual aids, there are several aspects of the communication that must be taken into consideration for the visual aid to be

E-Marketing in Terms of Visual Communication Given
Words: 6172 Length: 20 Document Type: Thesis

E-Marketing in Terms of Visual Communication Given the increased use of the Internet in past few years, e-marketing has had an indisputable progress within the past decade. Generally, daily activities and the variety of internet have created interest of consumers as many websites are creating virtual designs in order to strengthen their relations with customers. These developments have not only contributed to the creation of visual communications but have also

Communication Arguments
Words: 964 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

Communication: Arguments What is the communication problem? When two cultures meet, both are likely to be ethnocentric. Those from the United States, try to find similarities in the other cultures with that of their own. Brazil as a country is unique in many ways. It is stated that what was considered non-fashionable in U.S. -- for example being fat is taken as natural in Brazil. (Palka, 2006) Thus in that culture messages

Visual Literacy in Higher Education
Words: 3931 Length: 9 Document Type: Term Paper

..now requires understanding and manipulating the processes used to create messages in the modern world" (Adams & Hamm, 2000, p. 22) in fact the student is expected to be able to decode the information from various types of media. However the equally important point is also made that this expanding definition of what literacy comprises does not "...diminish the importance of traditional reading and writing skills; rather, it recognizes the

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now