Reading Images…

1. Reading Images… in Written Texts and Screens

2. Images in Bram Stoker’s Dracula • Make a list of dominant images in the novel • Categorize the images into binary opposites

3. Questions to ask… • Images in written texts • Are the images symbolic or iconic? • If an image is symbolic, how does its significance or symbolism impact on a particular setting or context? • Does the image have cultural significance or relevance or is it universal? • What cultural background do you need to have to be able to identify or understand the cultural significance of the image?

4. More questions…. • Which images predominantly define a character/ setting /event in your novel? • What is the dominant meaning implied through the cluster of these images? Does it empower or disempower a character/ setting/ event? • Of the two kinds of images that empower/ disempower , which of the two occur as a repetitive motif and dominate?

5. Images and viewpoint • Whose viewpoint dominates at the end of the novel? • What images /signs/ symbols are destroyed by the end of the novel? • What is the dominant ideology that emerges with the destruction of these images? • If you were to film this text, to what extent would the major conflict of the story represented through the binary opposition of contrasting images? • Do you think the dominant ideology you have in mind for the film, will influence your choice of images?

6. Film – Viewer Positioning • Stuart Hall states that there are three positions that viewers can take as decoders of cultural images and artificats: • Dominant hegemonic reading: they can identify with the hegemonic position and receive the dominant message of an image in an unquestioning manner • Negotiated Reading: They can negotiate an interpretation from an image and its dominant meanings • Oppositional Reading: Finally they can take an oppositional position, either by completely disagreeing with the ideological position embodied in an image or rejecting it altogether ( e.g by ignoring it)

7. Semiotic and Constructivist approach to reading images • The creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing and personalization. • Roland Barthes – all images have two kinds of meaning • Denotative – literal descriptive meaning • Connotative – cultural and historical context of the image through which its meaning is understood.

8. Semiotic Approach of reading images – • Visual texts have rules, codes and conventions about how they are organized.

9. The Codes of Visual texts -Print • The Codes of Visual texts are a useful tool to examine visual texts, such as advertisements, photographs, posters, picture books. • There are 3 kinds of codes: • Technical Codes • Symbolic Codes • Written Codes

10. Technical Codes • Medium: Pen and ink, water colour, digital, photo. • Perspective or Camera Angle: High angle, low angle, eye level etc. • Framing / Proximity: The placement of people, objects, words within a frame. Kind of shot -Close-up, mid or medium shot, long distance shot etc. • Lighting: darkness, light, shadows • Sequence of Images/ Juxtaposition

11. Symbolic Codes of Visual text - Print • Objects, shapes and figures: Any of these can act as a symbol depending on the understanding by the viewer. E.g a hat is an object but a chef’s hat is different from a police cap. • Size and position of objects and layout • Settings • Body Language: facial expressions, gestures and • Colour: The use of colour, or black or white colour is always linked in some way with the intention or content of the text.

12. Lets read a few images….

14. Social-constructivist Approach – • Visual media and other systems of representation, like language, do not reflect an already existing reality so much as they organise, construct, and mediate our understanding of reality, emotion and imagination. • We construct the meaning of the material world through these systems of representation. • In different cultural contexts, the meaning of he material world will be constructed in different ways.