Hello fellow artists,

I think there is a solid place for images of blood, gore, anxiety, fear, repression, anger, etc., particularly if the work provides catharsis. However, today's entry is about celebrating the joys of human experience.

From Aperture, v. 18, #2, 1974:

"A photograph that celebrates is an affirmation of existence. It may celebrate life by documenting the actual celebrations of man and the commonality and continuity of human experience. It may rejoice in life through visual equivalents and expressive symbols. A photograph that celebrates may glorify the elemental forces of birth and death, sex and energy. A photograph that celebrates may exult in the imagination and the intellect, in consciousness and intuition, in the spirit and the sublime. A photograph that celebrates in the transition from sight to insight and extols the mystery that falls between conception and creation." -- Jonathan Green

Technorati Tags: visual literacy, visual communication, visual media, celebrations, photography

Clematis and Bluebird
Patricia Roshaven
Photo Album

Hello fellow artists,

Do you sometimes wonder what a picture means? Are you a visual artist? How visually literate are you? Yesterday's blog entry was about visual literacy, although the term was not yet in use when Nancy Newhall's quote was originally published.

Visual literacy, or the ability to understand visual images and the ability to communicate with visual images, is a crucial skill for the 21st century person. We are bombarded with visuals on television, in movies, and on the Internet. Our ability to interpret these visuals accurately gives us a valuable edge.

According to enGuage, students who are visually literate:
-- Have working knowledge of visuals produced or displayed through electronic media.
-- Understand basic elements of visual design, technique, and media.
-- Are aware of emotional, psychological, physiological, and cognitive influences in perceptions of visuals.
-- Comprehend representational, explanatory, abstract, and symbolic images.
-- Apply knowledge of visuals in electronic media.
-- Are informed viewers, critics, and consumers of visual information.
-- Are knowledgeable designers, composers, and producers of visual information.
-- Are effective visual communicators.
-- Are expressive, innovative visual thinkers and successful problem solvers.

Selected resources for visual literacy:

-- Joel and Irene Benedict Visual Literacy Collection

-- International Visual Literacy Association

-- The Online Visual Literacy Project

-- Visual literacy activities and exercises

-- 21st Century Literacies

-- See also my information package on symbolism.

Learning the language of images will give you greater control over your art work, increase your ability to explain your art work to others and enrich your understanding of your culture.

Technorati Tags: visual literacy, visual communication, visual media, symbolism

Morning Walk
Patricia Roshaven
Photo Album

Hello fellow artists,

Nancy Newhall (1908 - 1974) was a photography critic and colleague of some of the masters of photography who were making waves 1940 - 1970. She edited books of photographs by Ansel Adams, Paul Strand and Edward Weston and was a founder and regular contributor to Aperture, which was and still is devoted to fine art photography. The following is by Nancy Newhall and published in Aperture, v. 1 #1, 1952.

Her words are prescient, given how much time we devote to visual media -- television, movies and the Internet.

"Perhaps the old literacy of words is dying and a new literacy of images is being born. Perhaps the printed page will disappear and even our records be kept in images and sounds. Perhaps the new photography-writing -- so new we have no word for it -- is a transition form, and perhaps, instead, it is, in embryo and by virtue of principles now being discovered and applied, the form through which we shall speak to each other, in many succeeding phases of photography, for a thousand years or more.

We are not yet taught to read photographs as we read words. Only a few thousands, among our hundreds of millions, have trained themselves like photographers and editors to read a photograph in its multilayered significance. Yet more and more photographers have discovered that the power of the photograph springs from a deeper source than words --the same deep source as music. At birth we begin to discover that shapes, sounds, lights, and texture have meaning. Long before we learn to talk, sounds and images form the world we live in. All our lives, that world is more immediate than words and difficult to articulate. Photography, reflecting those images with uncanny accuracy, evokes their associations and our instant conviction. The art of the photographer lies in using those connotations, as a poet uses the connotations of words and a musician the tonal connotations of sounds."

For more about how to read visual images, see my information package on symbolism and tomorrow's blog entry.

Technorati Tags: Aperture magazine, visual literacy, photography, symbolism

Angel's Trumpet
Patricia Roshaven
Photo Album