© Jody Walker, Eva R. Brumberger. Background Report: Visual Rhetoric Document design. Visual Rhetoric refers to conveying information through the visual aspects of a document, or presentation, rather than through its verbal aspects, to enhance audience’s comprehension. It encompasses document design which includes the use of text, graphics, images, and visual depictions of data, images to create a meaningful page layout. What is Visual Rhetoric? 

© Jody Walker, The shapes in the document can reinforce the content.

© Jody Walker, Image takes preference! Newspaper reading research has found that readers look at a photograph first, scan the caption, read the headline and if they are still interested, read the story. But how do images and text work together? 

© Jody Walker, Perception of the importance attached to words or pictures in publications is often communicated by the size, position and proximity of the words to the visuals. On the front page of a newspaper, the most important story and photograph of the day often takes up the most space and is above the horizontal fold. The headline, story text and caption are near one another. Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication, Part One by Paul Martin Lester, Ph.D. 

© Jody Walker, Is there a relationship between image and unrelated text? The Boston Globe newspaper, like many newspapers, puts advertisements on the same page as its news stories. The juxtaposition of this advertisement for wedding merchandise with an article on imported sex slaves provokes an unintentional reading of the ad. A playful gesture of the groom carrying his bride over his shoulder is no longer innocent. Whether one views the photo as subtle verification of “wife as property” or as a contrast to sex slaves (isn’t it great to be married in the USA), the text is no longer separate from the image.

© Jody Walker,  Christy Flores. Chapter 6 Meaning and Composition: Overview Be careful where you place your images. Cultures have different assumptions for the right and left side. For example: placing a photograph on the left or right side will suggest credibility/culpability of the individual depicted, depending on the (unconscious) cultural preference.

© Jody Walker, “The misguided belief that words and photographs are trustworthy/true, the erroneous (and arrogant) theory that humans can and do separate visual processing from thinking (and that “thinking” is of a higher order) inadvertently impact our lives daily in many ways.”  David Chandler. Theory of Communication What should you think about when choosing text and images?

© Jody Walker, Are you sure about the accuracy of your images? Are they “truthful?” Who created them and how?

© Jody Walker, Photojournalism as evidence of an event? This image of a large, supportive crowd was actually a composite collage created by duplicating figures and sections.

© Jody Walker, Due to the amount of equipment involved in creating a photographic opportunity and image, especially in the 19th century, photographs cannot be used as spontaneous, reliable “snapshots” of what the world was like (Moment of Action, Moment of Documentation). The basic, underlying concept of a photographic image as being easily reproduced makes authenticating an “original” impossible. At best, the negative itself comes closest to a record…although so many manipulations (techniques to enhance a photograph) take place during the actual printing, that the negative may bear very little resemblance to the product the public sees (intrinsic and Extrinsic Elements of Form). Joan Schwartz. “’We make our tools and our tools make us’: Lessons from Photographs for the Practice, Politics, and Poetics of Diplomatics.” Archivaria no. 40 (February 1995): Optical precision (a photographic) is not a guarantee of document neutrality, truth or reality (Evidential Value).

© Jody Walker, The American Memory Collection selects images from the collection of the Library of Congress. Many of the photographs from the Civil War that we use as documentation of the events were, in fact, staged. The same dead soldier was used in multiple photographs, dressed in both Union and Confederate uniforms, propped up against a fence, sprawled out on his back on a battlefield.