Outline and discuss the evidence for the argument that we need to learn to 'read' pictures.
Guidance
For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module, see the general criteria.
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What Key Features Do I Look For?
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Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text (not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher. Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this department, click here.
Advice for this particular assignment: 'Commonsense' suggests that pictures do not require 'reading': at least not 'realistic' drawings and paintings and certainly not photographs. Semioticians argue that in this matter commonsense is wrong: even 'realistic' images involve 'codes' or conventions that have to be learned. We have seen in the lectures, for instance, that linear perspective is a pictorial convention that we have to learn, but that once we've learned it, it feels 'natural'. When we know what we are looking at we tend to think that the resemblance is in the image itself and we don't notice how much interpretation we had to do in order to make sense of it. Even photographs lack some of the qualities of what they represent - for instance, they are flat and usually much smaller than what they depict, and we have to know what we are seeing in order to know how to disentangle one object from another and to establish their spatial relations. How do we know that there really isn't a flowerpot on grandma's head in a snapshot in the family photo album? Draw on some of the concepts you have learned about in the lectures (e.g. individual and cultural differences and Gestalt principles of perception), but find further evidence and examples to support your points. This is not a Visual Art essay, though you may use some examples from art. Try to use examples that do not seem to require much reading and then demonstrate how they do require people to draw on both textual knowledge (knowledge of the medium/genre/technique) and social knowledge (knowledge of the world and of how things usually are) to make sense of the image. Try to think as you might if you were an alien being who had just found the Pioneer space-probe's plaque, and recall Gombrich's critique of it (though show some imagination by not using that particular example!). Consider photographs as well as drawings and paintings. Examine in particular cross-cultural and developmental studies of pictorial perception: these help to demonstrate that we learn to make sense of images. Don't make a major point about stories of 'primitive' cultures having initial difficulty in making sense of drawings and photographs because there's a separate essay on this controversial issue.
The best essays demonstrate appropriate critical reading of academic sources. Show that you are aware of different viewpoints and try to map out the areas of agreement and disagreement. Do not simply present the claims of academic authors as if they were indisputable. Where different authors disagree, compare their arguments and evaluate the evidence they offer. What evidence or examples can you find to support or challenge particular claims?
Note also that this is an assignment for which the inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is essential.
Some suggested reading
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!
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