VISUAL LITERACY
by Patryk Rebisz

When you read this article, you are not alone.
The article exists inside a window, surrounded by ads, text or even videos. Maybe you came to this article in the middle of writing an email or skimming through a different article.
Even if this article is filling your screen, you are still surrounded by objects that take away your attention; maybe a pile of unpaid bills or a cat sleeping on top of your keyboard.
There is your apartment.
Your neighborhood.
Your town/city.
Your country.
The times you are living in now.
The politics and culture of now; the current president, wars, general interest of mass mind, pop culture, what came before NOW and how historical events are perceived and understood at this very moment in time.

All those “surrounding” events influence how you perceive what you see and read. The meaning of THIS article is directly related to events and occurrences outside of it.

Any image is telling a story using a certain FORM. This form is not chosen by accident but is part of image maker's assumption of how to best influence you. The form is part of the maker's agenda.

I’m making a documentary film which uses a lot of simple visual metaphors. Despite the simplicity, many people don’t comprehend those metaphors. This happens because I’m either still too abstract in what I’m saying (or using the wrong medium to express myself) or the audience is lacking the ability to decipher the form. This phenomenon is almost counter-intuitive, in that the more images we are bombarded with, the less we are able to comprehend them. This statement is true only if the images we are bombarded with are of banal nature - the images where there is no immediate necessity to decipher the image to understand its surface.

Propaganda and advertising are fantastic examples of how the meaning of images can be distorted. Both depend on our inability or lack of desire to question the surface of images. Even the most simplistic images can have a deeper meaning in that we often project our dreams and desires onto them, giving them profundity. A smiling face in a commercial is more than just a smile; it signifies our desire for happiness. We project our own outlook of the world onto the images, which is where visual consumption can enter dangerous territory. By projecting ourselves into images, we let images “get” to us. We assume we’re the ones giving the images power when in reality, it’s the presumption of our own power that allows the images to influences us.

It’s important to understand images in order to comprehend the agenda of the image maker, which can change or influence our perception of the message. Images serve an important function in our culture. Sometimes that function is quite banal; illustrating an article with a stock image for example. Take a random stock image chosen to accompanying an article about (XYZ) on a website of a prestigious newspaper.

In this circumstance, the image wasn’t chosen because it’s not a unique way to illustrate the main point of the article, but because it’s the most OBVIOUS way to communicate what the article is about. Even though very little effort was put into choosing this specific image (outside of deciding which image is most obvious), the image does say something about the value of the article.
It says that the content of the article is generic.
It says that the content is meant to be seen by the largest number of people possible with no concern for particular tastes or distinctions. Originality and uniqueness of the image would eliminate the potential to connect with as many people as possible.

The image is also making it clear to the viewer that there is no ambition on part of the editor or writer to make a point or take a stance; it’s not a well researched piece of journalism, but a pop piece written to generate clicks, and through clicks, revenue. Everything in the article is designed for low-impact consumption.

Messages are instantaneous on the surface of many images and don’t require much context to decipher the ideas behind them. Smiling faces = happiness, frowning faces = sadness. Visual literacy is also fluid and depends on the observer’s ability to decipher the symbols within the image. We can never presume that the goal of the image is to deliver one singular idea and to disregard the agenda which accompanies the image. We constantly undervalue the power of persuasion images have. When we see an advertisement for fast food, we rarely run out the door to go purchase a fast food meal BUT we often fail to notice that the next time we are outside and hungry, we choose that specific brand which had been imprinted in our mind.

In the middle of winter, an ad agency for a juice company hired painters to create a 30 story high image of the inside of an orange. The image of the cut-through orange symbolised sunshine. No one could understand why they were advertising sunshine in the middle of the freezing winter, which was where the brilliance of the campaign lied. The image was giving the viewer what he/she unconsciously desired: sunshine in the gloomy winter. Here the orange represented sunshine, so the viewers were driven towards wanting oranges. The campaign was stronger because no one could understand it’s logic. When viewers are unaware of being manipulated into certain states of mind, they are more likely to succumb to that manipulation.

Visual literacy requires simplifying reality in order to extrapolate more complex meanings; meanings which require an abstract ability of mind to extrapolate. We create an image of ourselves that never matches reality, in the same way we can never truly see ourselves how others see us (which explains the surprise you experience when watching yourself on film). As we start interacting with the world, our extensions of ourselves through which we interact become simplified. We de-emphasize the world of the senses to fit our ideas related to the world.

The more we know, the less we pay attention to our senses and the more we are forced to deal with abstractions: what we presume the world to be rather than what it really is. By converting reality into abstract symbols, one can more easily comprehend reality - reality stops being a complex system with unlimited number of variables but becomes a collection of simplified ideas. The danger starts when reality stops being relevant in that comprehension. The problem starts when we start perceiving everything around us that simplified ideas devoid of its potentials.