We live in a world filled with images. From photographs on social media to advertisements on billboards, visuals shape how we see and understand the world around us. The relationship between what we see (images) and how we think, and what more we think about what we see (imagination) is more complex than it first appears. Images work as powerful tools of communication and how our imagination helps us both understand and create new visual meanings.
Drawing on ideas from thinkers like John Berger and various theories about how we interpret visuals, we must approach visuals as carefully constructed messages that carry deeper meanings about power, identity, and society.
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The Nature of Images: Images are not neutral or natural recordings of reality. Instead, they are "visuals that are made to be seen" – carefully constructed presentations of selected moments. As John Berger explains, an image is "a sight which has been recreated or reproduced" and "detached from the place and time in which it first appeared." In other words, images are artificial creations that freeze specific moments and present them as meaningful.
Think about famous photographs like Joe Rosenthal's image of U.S. Marines planting the American flag on Iwo Jima, or Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" from 1936. These photographers didn't just capture random moments – they created powerful symbols by choosing what to include in their frame and what to leave out. These images became important not because they showed everything that happened, but because they selected and presented specific moments that seemed to represent larger truths.
This process of selection is crucial. We see only the frame made available to us. This means our understanding of events, people, and situations is limited by the choices made by those who create and share images. We don't get the full story – we get the version someone decided to show us.
How Images Communicate: Every image works like a sign – it stands for something beyond what we literally see. This is where semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, becomes important. Images don't just show us things; they communicate ideas, emotions, and meanings that go far beyond their surface content.
For example, a red rose in a photograph might literally be just a flower, but in another context it often communicates ideas about love, passion, or romance. The meaning isn't built into the rose itself – it comes from cultural agreements about what roses represent. This shows us that understanding images requires knowledge of the cultural codes and conventions that give them meaning.
Harold Lasswell's communication model helps us analyse images systematically by asking: "who says what, in what channel, to whom, and with what effect?" This approach treats images as active forms of communication rather than passive objects, recognising that they carry messages from creators to audiences with specific purposes and effects.
Different Ways of Understanding Images
Gestalt Theory: it is seeing the Whole Picture. Gestalt theory teaches us that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." When we look at images, our minds automatically organise what we see into meaningful patterns. We don't just see individual elements – we see relationships, connections, and overall meanings that emerge from how these elements work together.
This explains why some images have powerful impacts that seem greater than what we might expect from their individual parts. Our minds naturally create unified understanding from fragmented visual information.
Psychology and the Unconscious Mind: Psychoanalytic theory suggests that images work as "windows to the unconscious mind." This means images both come from and trigger unconscious desires, memories, and conflicts from our past, especially childhood experiences. This helps explain why certain images affect us emotionally in ways we might not fully understand.
Some images resonate powerfully across different cultures and time periods because they connect with deep psychological patterns that many people share.
Power and Politics in Images
Marxist theory reminds us that images are never neutral – they always serve someone's interests. Those who control the creation and distribution of images (typically wealthy and powerful groups) use this control to present their worldview as natural and normal, while marginalising other perspectives.
Feminist theory focuses on how images often reinforce harmful stereotypes about gender, particularly through what's called the "male gaze" – the tendency for visual culture to present the world from masculine perspectives and treat women as objects to be looked at rather than subjects with their own agency.
Queer theory challenges the binary categories (like strictly male/female or heterosexual/homosexual) that structure much visual representation. It highlights how diverse human identities and experiences often get simplified or erased in mainstream visual culture.
Seeing as an Active Choice
John Berger's insight that "seeing is an active decision" challenges the common belief that looking at images is a passive activity. Instead, seeing requires effort, attention, and critical thinking. We don't just absorb visual information automatically – we have to actively work to understand what images mean and how they affect us.
This connects to Susan Sontag's reference to Plato's cave allegory, suggesting that we often mistake images for reality itself. Images can sometimes distract us from truth rather than reveal it, creating a world of shadows that we accept as real. However, if we approach seeing as an active decision, we can develop the skills to see through these limitations.
The recognition that "large part of seeing depends upon habit and convention" shows us how our cultural background shapes what seems obvious or natural when we look at images. What appears normal is often the result of learned patterns of seeing that reflect specific cultural values.
Imagination
It is the power to create and critique. Imagination serves two important functions in visual culture. First, it's the creative force that generates new images and new ways of seeing. Second, it's the critical tool that helps us question and challenge existing visual representations.
Imagination is defined as "the act or power of forming a mental image not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality." This ability to visualise what doesn't yet exist makes imagination central to both artistic creation and social change.
René Magritte's observation that "everything that you see hides another thing" points to how imagination helps us perceive what's hidden in images. It gives us the ability to question what seems obvious and to envision alternatives to current ways of representing the world.
A Practical Approach
“READ. ANALYSE. CREATE” is a practical three-step framework for engaging with visual culture.
Read means exposing yourself to many different kinds of images, both actual photographs and paintings, and mental images from your imagination and memory. This builds your visual vocabulary and understanding of how images work. "Actual images" refer to the tangible visual representations surrounding us – photographs, paintings, design, and motion pictures. "Mental images" refer to the pictures we entertain in our minds, memories, and thoughts. This step highlights the constant input of visual information and thinking that forms the foundation of our understanding.
Analyse means applying critical thinking to understand, challenge, and deconstruct existing images and their meanings. This involves using the theoretical tools discussed above to dig deeper into how images communicate and what purposes they serve. "Understand/challenge the existing images and meaning," moves beyond passive reception to active critical engagement. It calls for analysing how images are constructed, what meanings they convey, and whose perspectives they represent. The word "challenge" suggests questioning dominant narratives, uncovering biases, and recognising the social and cultural forces that shape image production and interpretation. This aligns with a critical visual literacy, much like John Berger's approach of dissecting the "ways of seeing."
Create means using your imagination to visualise and make new images that offer different perspectives or challenge existing representations. This recognises that everyone can participate in visual culture not just as consumers but as creators who can contribute new possibilities. "imagine /visualise/create them anew" underscores the transformative power of imagination in relation to images. This isn't just about passively receiving and critiquing; it's about actively using imagination to envision alternatives, generate new perspectives, and ultimately, to create new images. This step highlights the recursive nature of the process: our engagement with existing images fuels our imagination, which in turn can lead to the creation of novel visual expressions, thus contributing back to the rich tapestry of visual culture.
This three-step process suggests that developing visual literacy is not just an academic exercise but a practical skill essential for navigating our image-saturated world. It also implies that we all have the potential to contribute to expanding the range of visual possibilities available in our culture.
Conclusion
The relationship between image and imagination reveals how visual culture works in our society. Images, as constructed realities rather than neutral records, shape our understanding of the world while being shaped by the social and political contexts in which they're created and shared. The various theoretical approaches we've discussed provide tools for understanding how images function as systems of meaning and power.
Imagination emerges as both the creative force that generates new visual possibilities and the critical faculty that can challenge existing representations. When we understand that seeing is an active decision, we become empowered to engage critically with visual culture rather than passively accepting whatever images are presented to us.
In our current age of social media and digital imagery, developing critical visual literacy becomes increasingly important. The framework of reading, analysing, and creating provides a practical way to engage with visual culture that can lead to more diverse, inclusive, and critically aware forms of visual representation.
thanks. it is very comprehensive introduction to visuals and images.
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