2001 Rose Visual Methodologi

Visual Methodologies For Mauro, Giorgio and Lydia Visual Methodologies An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials Gillian Rose SAGE Publications London · Thousand Oaks · New Delhi Ø Gillian Rose 2001 First published 2001. Reprinted 2001, 2002 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash ± I New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 6664 1 ISBN 0 7619 6665 X (pbk) Library of Congress catalog record available Typeset by Mayhew Typesetting, Rhayader, Powys Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire contents list of ®gures vii acknowledgements ix introducing this book 1 1 researching visual materials: towards a critical visual methodology 5 2 `the good eye': looking at pictures using compositional interpretation 33 3 content analysis: counting what you (think you) see 54 4 semiology: laying bare the prejudices beneath the smooth surface of the beautiful 69 5 psychoanalysis: visual culture, visual pleasure, visual disruption 100 6 discourse analysis I: text, intertextuality, context 135 7 discourse analysis II: institutions and ways of seeing 164 8 other methods, mixing methods 187 useful reading on various visual media 205 references 207 list of key terms 216 index 219 list of ®gures Figure 1.1 Conservative Party election poster 11 Figure 1.2 Double-page spread from John Berger's Ways of Seeing 13 Figure 1.3 Robert Doisneau, An Oblique Look 18 Figure 1.4 Sites, modalities and methods for interpreting visual materials 30 Figure 2.1 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-portrait, 1629 36 Figure 2.2 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-portrait, 1657 36 Figure 2.3 Geometrical perspective 41 Figure 2.4 Geometrical perspective 42 Figure 2.5 Geometrical perspective 42 Figure 2.6 Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878 43 Figure 3.1 Adioukrou Woman, an image from National Geographic magazine 58 Figure 3.2 Average number per article of National Geographic photographs with Westerners in non-Western settings, 1950±86 64 Figure 3.3 Regional population compared to National Geographic articles published in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, as percentage of total, 1950±86 65 Figure 4.1 Advertisement 76 Figure 4.2 Advertisement for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto 79 Figure 4.3 Silver Cross advertisement, 1998 80 Figure 4.4 Dentinox teething gel advertisement, 1998 81 Figure 4.5 Basic spatial organization of an advertisement 85 Figure 4.6 Chanel and Babe advertisements, 1978 86 viii VISUAL METHODOLOGIES Figure 4.7 Analysis of Chanel and Babe advertisements 87 Figure 5.1 (a) Nineteenth-century soft porn postcard (b) Nochlin's construction of equivalent male image 109 Figure 5.2 Still from Hitchcock's Rear Window 111 Figure 5.3 Still from Hitchcock's Rebecca 121 Figure 5.4 Still from Hitchcock's Vertigo 122 Figure 5.5 Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors, 1533 124 Figure 6.1 Jan van Eyck, Arnol®ni Wedding Portrait, 1434 146 Figure 6.2 Gustave DoreÂ, illustration to The Bridge of Sighs, 1878 152 Figure 6.3 W. Gray, Lost 152 Figure 6.4 W. Gray, Found 152 Figure 6.5 Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), The River 153 Figure 6.6 George Frederick Watts, Found Drowned, 1848±50 153 Figure 6.7 Map from Charles Booth's descriptive map of London poverty, 1889 155 Figure 6.8 Police Illustrated News, 17 November 1888 156 acknowledgements This book is based on a course I taught at the Graduate School for the Social Sciences, Edinburgh University, in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Most thanks must go to the students who took that course, for their enthusiastic engagement with the images I showed them and for their healthy scepticism towards methods textbooks. The Human Geography Reading Group at Edinburgh gave the ®rst chapter a thorough and very helpful going-over at an early stage; Mike Crang and Don Slater were constructive readers for Sage. Robert Rojek has been a very supportive editor. And there were useful and, more importantly, pleasurable conversations about matters visual and interpretive with Sue Smith, Charlie Withers and, especially, Mark Dorrian. My thanks to them too. Finally, many thanks to Anneliese Emmans for compiling the index. x VISUAL METHODOLOGIES The author and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to use copyright material: Figure 1.2 Ways of Seeing by John Berger, 1972, Penguin Books. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books. 1.3 Robert Doisneau, `An Oblique Look', Rapho Paris. 2.1 Self Portrait, 1629 by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606±69), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts, USA/Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on panel. 2.2 Self Portrait, 1657 by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606±69), The Collection of the Duke of Sutherland, on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland. 2.6 Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878, Mary Cassat, Collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon Ø 2000 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Oil on canvas. 3.1 Adioukrou Woman Ø Carol Beckwith/Agela Fisher. 3.2 Reading National Geographic by C.A. Lutz and J.L. Collins, 1993. By permission of Chicago University Press. 3.3 Reading National Geographic by C.A. Lutz and J.L Collins, 1993. By permission of Chicago University Press. 4.1, 4.6 Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising by 4.7 Judith Williamson,1978. Reproduced with permission of Marion Boyars. 4.5 Reading Ads Socially by R. Goldman, 1992. Reproduced by permission of Routledge. 5.2 Copyright Ø 2001 by Universal Studios, Inc. Courtesy of Universal Studios Publishing Rights. All Rights Reserved. The Stewart Family LLC and the Princess Grace Foundation, USA. 5.3 Courtesy of ABC Distributions and Joan Fontaine. 5.4 Copyright Ø 2001 by Universal Studios, Inc. Courtesy of Universal Studios Publishing Rights. All Rights Reserved. The Stewart Family LLC. 5.5 The Ambassadors, 1533, Hans Holbein the younger, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve Ø National Gallery London. 6.1 Jan van Eyck, The Arnol®ni Wedding Portrait Ø National Gallery, London. 6.2 Gustave DoreÂ, illustration to The Bridge of Sighs. By permission of the British Library. 6.3, 6.4 W. Gray, Lost and Found. By permission of the British Library. 6.5 Hablot K. Browne, The River. By permission of the British Library. 6.6 Found Drowned (oil on canvas) by George Frederick Watts (1817±1904) Trustees of the Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey, UK/Bridgeman Art Library. 6.7 Charles Booth's descriptive map of London Poverty, 1889. By permission of the London Topographical Society. 6.8 Police Illustrated News. By permission of the British Library. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked, or if any additional information can be given, the publishers will make the necessary amendments at the ®rst opportunity. introducing this book There's an awful lot of hype around `the visual' these days. We're often told that we now live in a world where knowledge as well as many forms of entertainment are visually constructed, and where what we see is as important, if not more so, than what we hear or read. So-called `visual illiteracy' is berated, and there are calls to restructure school and college curricula so that visual grammar can be learnt alongside understandings of texts, numbers and molecules. Yet there's also a lot of confusion about what exactly all this might entail. Indeed, there's a lot of confusion about the visual itself. Is it like a language or not? How do visual images work? As W.J.T. Mitchell (1994: 13) says at the beginning of his book on Picture Theory, `we still do not know exactly what pictures are, what their relation to language is, how they operate on observers and on the world, how their history is 2 VISUAL METHODOLOGIES to be understood, and what is to be done with or about them'. So even if it was certain that the world, or at least some parts of it, is increasingly encountered visually (and this is itself a debatable claim), it isn't clear exactly what that might mean for what is seen and for what, how and who sees and doesn't. Nor is it clear what, practically, might be useful ways of examining these issues through empirical studies. Despite the huge amount of academic work currently being published on things visual, there are remarkably few guides to possible methods of interpretation and even fewer explanations of how to do those methods. This book aims to ®ll that gap. It is addressed to the undergraduate student who has found some intriguing visual materials to work with, knows that they raise some interesting issues, but isn't quite sure how to proceed from there. This book offers a methodological guide to the production of empirically grounded responses to particular visual materials. As Stuart Hall says: It is worth emphasising that there is no single or `correct' answer to the question, `What does this image mean?' or `What is this ad saying?' Since there is no law which can guarantee that things will have `one, true meaning', or that meanings won't change over time, work in this area is bound to be interpretative ± a debate between, not who is `right' and who is `wrong', but between equally plausible, though sometimes competing and contesting, meanings and interpretations.

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