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Reading Images: An Approach and a Demonstration
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by Robert DiYanni
The College Board
New York, New York
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| | Approaching Images
Students need to learn how to read images, including images linked with texts, for many of the same reasons they learn how to analyze and interpret purely verbal texts -- essays, memoirs, articles, and other forms of nonfiction; poems, stories, plays, and other genres of literature. Most of the general strategies used for interpreting and analyzing verbal texts can be imported to the analysis and interpretation of images. However, some of the particular techniques for analyzing and understanding images differ. What follows offers an approach to reading images, including images linked with text.
Let's dive right in by looking at the following image -- really a pair of related images.
What do we notice when we view this image overall? What particular details stand out? What questions might we ask ourselves about those details?
As with the analysis of anything, we begin with observation -- what we notice. A quick scan of the overall image helps us to place it as a particular kind of image. We gain a sense, that is, of its genre. We do this most often unconsciously, and we base our sense of genre on our prior experience with texts and images. We will have much more to say about the importance of observation shortly, and we will take the time to walk through a series of observations about this image. But the first thing we must do is identify its genre.
We can see right away that the image does not stand alone; it's accompanied by a brief text. And while the visual image dominates the text both literally and figuratively, we will need to pay attention to that text once we have analyzed the visual elements. From the start, however, the words help us identify the genre of what we are looking at.
So how do we categorize this image with text? Is it a political cartoon? It appeared in a major national newspaper -- the New York Times. If we are given its placement in the paper, as we are here, we determine that it is an illustration to accompany an op-ed piece, though we are only provided with the title of that piece here. (The article is not included because it's dated; the article's headline, however, is not dated. Nor is the illustration.) Moreover, the words appear below the illustration they accompany, which indicates that something was meant to follow, rather than appearing above the illustration as a caption.
Now that we have established what we are looking at -- an image that accompanies an opinion piece, we are in a position to begin a more extended analysis. We can use four simple steps:
- Make observations.
- Connect the observations.
- Draw inferences from the related observations.
- Formulate a tentative interpretive conclusion.
I have used bullet points for these aspects of analysis rather than numbers to suggest that although we can proceed through these elements as steps or stages, they are not strictly linear. Instead, we move back through earlier steps more than once; we anticipate inferences and conclusions even before completing making observations and connections. The process is cyclical and recursive.
Making Observations
Observations require focus. In looking carefully at each element of the overall image, what do we see? We see two silhouettes of figures (can we call them "soldiers"?), each holding a weapon. One of them, in fact, brandishes two weapons. We notice, too, that the figures' postures differ, and that the way they wield their weapons differs, as well. So too do their uniforms, along with their relative sizes and the sizes of the shadows the figures cast.
What are we to make of these observations? How can we link or relate them? Shall we assume that the figures are adversaries, that they are in the same picture plane and field of space -- that they stare directly at each other? Or do we see them as not directly confronting one another but rather as enemies who could and probably would do so in the normal structure of their experience. Of course, we must ask where these figures (soldiers) are meant to be located. Afghanistan, perhaps, or more likely Iraq, based on the date the article and image appeared in the Times.
But let's look more closely at their weapons, which we notice are differently poised. Does the downward-pointing weapon of the soldier on the right suggest a peaceful stance? Or is this soldier ready to raise his weapon, readying it to shoot an enemy like the one pictured on the left? Why does this figure have his weapons raised aloft? In anticipation? In attack? In defense? In defiance? In celebration? Are we satisfied with describing those weapons as a gun and a sword? Or shall we pick up on the more precise rendering the artist provides, seeing them as a Kalashnikov and a scimitar? What connotations adhere to those terms and to the weapons those words denote?
We also notice that the artist has drawn a set of lines above each soldier. Once again, we notice differences in the crisscrossed lines above the soldier on the right and the darker, scribbled lines above the soldier on the left. We notice that the artist has actually used one aspect of the "bubble" convention to illustrate a figure's thought or speech, in this case a short line just above each figure's head to indicate that the lines above represent his words or his thoughts.
Making Connections
Actually, we have already begun making connections, as we have been noting a series of contrasts between the two figures, their weapons, and the lines that appear above their heads. But we need to ask some questions about the relationship of these and other contrasting elements, as, for example, the more active stance of the figure on the left. And we should not neglect to query those contrasting linear patterns. Moreover, we shall want to relate all the elements that accompany each figure's image to one another and then relate the gestalt of each figure to the gestalt of the other.
Beyond these connections based on our detailed observations, we may wish to make other connections, such as those between this image overall and other images of soldiers we have seen. We may want to link this op-ed piece with other op-ed pieces we have viewed and read. And depending on how we eventually interpret the piece overall, we will connect it with other images and texts about war that we have seen and read, including recent military developments that pit figures like these against one another. But before doing any of those things, we need to have a brief look at the words, the "caption" that appears beneath the figures.
It reads: "War Isn't Fought in the Headlines." What are we to make of this statement? We can begin by noting that the statement is in negative form, which leads us to ask the question: If war is not fought in the headlines, where is it fought? And even before we attempt to answer the question, we should note that we need to link this headline to the details about the figures we have been describing. That is, we begin a connection between words and images, even though we may not yet have a full-scale understanding of the piece overall.
Drawing Inferences
An inference is an educated guess, one that is grounded in careful observation and informed by thoughtful questioning -- the kind of questioning we have been doing as we make connections among our observations. An inference is a statement about the unknown based on the known. We know a good deal about the image because we have taken time to observe each of its elements. And we have asked a number of questions about the details of the image, including its relationship to the underlying caption.
What might we infer from what we have noted and queried so far? We might infer, for example, that the two soldiers are indeed foes, one an American Army infantry (or perhaps a Marine, or even an ally soldier) and the other an Iraqi insurgent (or perhaps a foreign mercenary insurgent). We might infer that the figure on the left is about to attack the one on the right -- or we might infer that he is defending himself from the other figure, who is a trespassing invader of his homeland.
About the drawings above each figure we might infer that they represent radically different kinds of language and thinking. This inference could lead to another: that these adversaries not only do not understand each other or think like each other but that they speak mutually incomprehensible languages, possess diametrically opposed values, and have radically different understandings of the world.
About the caption beneath the figures we might infer that war is fought, on the one hand, on the ground of a particular country and, on the other, in the heads of the enemy combatants. This last possibility is suggested by considering the last word of the caption, "headlines." If we break that word into its component parts "head" and "lines," we get a literal rendering of what is pictured above the figures -- "lines" that reflect what is going on in the "head" of each. The more diagrammatic lines above the American soldier could reflect an orderly, logical, analytical mode of thinking and operating. The less-patterned, less-orderly lines above the head of the insurgent could reflect a more emotional and chaotic kind of thinking and acting.
But now we are pushing these inferences toward an interpretation.
Formulating a Conclusion
Arriving at an interpretive conclusion about such a rich piece isn't easy. But our conclusion, remember, does not have to be final; it can remain tentative and provisional -- and probably should. What are some ways that we might formulate our understanding of this piece as a conclusion, however tentative and provisional?
We might conclude that it suggests the mutual incomprehension at the heart of the cultures and worldviews of the soldier-figures depicted. The minds of these soldier-figures, like the worlds they inhabit, are dramatically different. And we might thus conclude that there does not appear to be much hope for dialogue between them, that any kind of real understanding is impossible. Christopher Vorlet's drawing, with its accompanying caption, suggests that wars are fought by those whose languages, ways of thinking, values, and conceptions of right and wrong differ so dramatically that the conflict between them has little likelihood of ever really being resolved.
Further Thoughts and Suggestions
The approach to reading images (with texts) that I have outlined here can be used to analyze any visual/verbal textual combination, as it can be used on either visual images or verbal texts independent of one another. In analyzing an advertisement, for example, readers would follow the process by attending first to the images, then to the words, and then to the connections between words and images.
In analyzing the ad's image, viewers would identify the major element and any minor elements, viewing larger pictures in relation to smaller ones, considering foreground in relation to background -- and so on. And if a logo or other icon is part of the picture, that would warrant attention as well.
Analogously, in analyzing an ad's words, readers would consider the headline, the body copy, and the concluding clincher. In analyzing body copy, they would break down that copy into smaller chunks -- paragraphs or sentences perhaps, depending on its length.
And they would analyze the ad's language for tone and implication, attending to denotation and connotation, as well as to simile and metaphor, syntax and structure, wordplay and sound -- all the usual verbal suspects.
Teachers need to work with students to analyze advertisements and political cartoons and commentary, using the same tools of analysis they use to help students understand fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction. Approaches to analysis like the one outlined here, and others that accomplish the same goals -- such as SOAPStone, which highlights a work's subject, occasion, audience, purpose, style, and tone -- are made to order for ads and political cartoons. So, too, are some of the formal approaches to rhetorical analysis that invite consideration of a work's appeals (especially useful for advertisements), identification of its claims, and analysis of the evidence used to support those claims. Use of the rhetorical trinity of ethos, pathos, and logos is another such tool. But regardless of the tools used, students need to gain experience with them; they need opportunities to practice doing their own analysis, rather than just reading, hearing, or viewing someone else's demonstration.
In working with the demonstration presented here, for example, it would be useful to provide students with the picture first without the words, as a way of focusing their attention on the visual. Perhaps the piece could be presented in sections so as, for example, to leave off the lines above the heads of the figures -- again to encourage a close look at the figures and their weapons. This could then be followed by a fuller image with the lines included. And then after a thorough set of observations, connections, inferences, and a provisional conclusion, the text -- "War Isn't Fought in the Headlines" -- could be introduced for consideration.
This kind of focused analysis not only allows for a more scrupulous consideration of image and text independently but also provides for the gradual development of a reader/viewer's understanding. Its goal is to slow down the analytical process, making it more deliberate (and deliberative) and providing a student with time to build an interpretation while laying a foundation beneath it. An added bonus is that students will be doing a good deal of critical thinking (though probably without being aware of it), employing thinking strategies that can be taught, practiced, and learned. But that's a topic for a future AP Central article.
Robert DiYanni, the director of K-12 International Services for the College Board, is an adjunct professor of humanities at New York University. He has written or edited more than thirty-five books on writing, literature, and the humanities, including books for students of English in China and Taiwan.
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