1. Learning Target: I can analyze a photograph using knowledge of the Civil War.
Do Now: In a newspaper, what is the function of photographs? What makes an effective photograph in newspapers?

2. What is visual analysis?
In a visual analysis, your job is to break down the different elements of a text that communicates primarily with visuals. Your goal is to understand how these different elements communicate a message and accomplish a purpose.
Visual texts include things you see every day, such as:
Websites
Photos or paintings
Brochures or flyers
Advertisements

3. Visual vs. verbal analysis
Analyzing visual texts is both similar to and different from analyzing verbal texts:
In both cases, you consider the text’s rhetorical situation, which is made up of its audience, purpose, and context (or circumstances).
In both cases, you think about how the text’s elements communicate for that audience, purpose, and context.
But, in visual text, you focus primarily on visual elements instead of verbal.

4. Visual Analysis: The Process
As with all writing, there is no one process that will work for everyone when it comes to analyzing a visual text. As you develop your ideas for a visual analysis, though, you might find it useful to follow three general steps:
Describe
Respond
Analyze

5. Describe the text
Many people overlook this step, but simply describing a visual text is an important part of the process. Trying to analyze a visual text without being able to first describe it would be like trying to analyze an article without being able to first summarize it.
When you describe a visual text, you might look at:
Colors and shading
Objects and shapes
People and places
Arrangement of elements on page
Foreground and background

6. Respond to the text What’s my initial, gut reaction?
A good visual analysis will go beyond basic reaction, but thinking about how you react to a visual text can be useful in developing your ideas.
When you look at a visual text, think about:
What’s my initial, gut reaction?
How does the text make me feel?
What does the text make me think?
Does the text make we want to do something?
Does the text remind me of anything I’ve seen, heard, or read about before?

7. Analyze the text
In the next step, push beyond description and response. Consider how the text’s different elements communicate a message and accomplish a purpose. Remember the rhetorical situation: The audience, purpose, and context of the visual text.

8. Analyze the text, cont.
To think about how the text communicates a message to its reader, ask questions about each element you described. For each element, ask: What is its purpose? What is its effect on the audience? How does it contribute to the text’s message? How does it relate to the context?
As a reminder, some of these elements are:
Colors and shading
Objects and shapes
People and places
Arrangement of elements on page
Foreground and background

9. Let’s Practice! Describe Respond Analyze
On the following slide, you will see a photograph.
As a class, we will analyze the photo together. You will use the same process to analyze your own photos!
Remember:
Describe
Respond
Analyze