In the field of Visual Rhetoric, images are said to argue.
However, I don't think this is actually what is meant by
images that argue. For me, images have always had a story to tell, but only recently with my deeper interest in visual rhetoric have I found that not only is there a story in images, but there is often a story that wants to share a specific message, argue a point, change the mind, or even demand action on the part of the viewer. I have come to look at images as another form of an author's rhetorical expression, and this has increased my viewing pleasure quite a lot! Images were interesting before, but now I examine them a bit closer, and I pay more attention to how they make me feel--especially my initial reaction to them.
These two things--studying images more closely and paying attention to how they make you feel, fall under the guides given by
Roland Barthes of studium and punctum. A closer examination of an image relates to the studium. The studium of an image is the composition and context of an image.
It is a place where you might ask questions like:
What is this image trying to tell me?
What does this image want from me?
What special techniques, lighting, coloring, text additions, etc. might have been used and why?
What is included in this image and what was perhaps left out that could have been included?
Then we move to the punctum although the punctum usually comes first, and I mean very first--before you even know what hit you. This is where
Brian Massumi's idea of "the primacy of the affective" enters the story. Massumi explains affect as coming before the effect. It is an immediate reaction felt in the physical body and even after closer investigation, it may not be explainable in words because affect is not always understood in words or even ideas. Some phrases that I would attempt to label it with would be an "instinctual sense" or a "gut feeling", but these would only point to what we mean or even point to the path that leads to what we mean when we talk about the affective. I relate Massumi's "affective" response to
Roland Barthes' "punctum" of an image. It is the piercing part of the image that gets you at your core, described like an arrow has been shot into you.
It is a place where you might ask questions like:
Why do I feel what I feel about this image?
What is it that is getting me in the gut about this image?
How do I really feel about this image?
What relationships to my personal life, memories, past experiences, etc. does this image hold?
What does this image make me immediately think of?
I am really enjoying the study of Visual rhetoric because I think it has such power in getting a message across within moments and without much effort required on the part of the reader. It is a way to tell an entire story in a moment. I think in today's age, people are less likely to engage in reading a long rhetorical piece than they would be in glancing at an image. Specifically, I love the idea of being able to immerse people in a visually rhetorical experience such as Dr. Kyburz was able to do in her recent art installation.
What I think might be a wonderful but perhaps dangerous aspect of this field is that more people are exposed to images than they might be to a written piece--especially young people. When I look at the images shown in current advertisements which people of all ages are exposed to in copious amounts on a daily basis, it makes me wonder if they are getting bombarded with these images/messages to a point where they are taking it all in almost unconsciously now or if they are ignoring most of what is available because of the sheer volume of it all. I suppose there is a mixture of both happening.
In either case, I think it would be good for everyone to have a brief course in visual rhetoric in order to improve their critical thinking regarding images as well as written materials.
~L
