Decoding an Image

Visual images may not seem, at first glance, related to writing, critical thinking or reading. After all, one traditionally thinks of reading as something done to words, whether those words are in a book or on a computer screen. However, images can often convey ideas and messages that even the best-written essays struggle to convey. Being able to decode images and to subsequently write about them in an articulate and meaningful way has never been as important as it is in a day and age in which online identities are as, if not more, important than physical ones: resumes are electronic, bosses frequently search Facebook to check out prospective employees, and email and video communication has replaced many paper-based mediums.

Why Do We Need to Think Critically About Visual Messages?

We are surrounded by images: photographs and advertisements on Facebook and Twitter, YouTube videos, television shows, and movies—not to mention billboards, blogs, even food labels. All of these images have a rhetorical purpose. Why did your ex post a picture of the party at her house last night? To remind you that she has moved on. Without words, she conveyed a lot by simply tweeting a picture. Why do I constantly have to watch a loud commercial for tequila or the newest series on Spike TV before I can play a game on Facebook? Because for those 15 seconds, I’m a captive audience for a product that the advertiser thinks might interest me. Everywhere we look, we’re bombarded by visual messages. So, we must learn to engage critically with the world around us, to understand how images work, and how to look beyond the composition to see the message beneath. In short, we need to think critically about visual messages.

Images are also a particularly powerful tool because they transcend language-barriers. Someone whose native language is something other than English can understand an image—the famous picture of the American flag placed atop the rubble of the World Trade Center towers comes to mind—just as well as an English speaker as long as both speakers have an understanding of the cultural context of the image.

How Do You Read Images?

Reading an image involves similar processes to those required for the active reading of a novel or essay: identifying the context in which the image was produced, identifying a central idea (what I will refer to as the meaning), understanding how the various components (symbols) of the image work together to form that central idea, and using all those features to recognize the purpose of the image.

       In other words, reading an image involves answering four main questions:

• What is the context in which this image exists?
• What are the main symbols involved in the image?
• What seems to be the overall message or meaning of the image?
• For what rhetorical purpose might such an image be used?

The above ordering of questions is not an accident; an image’s rhetorical purpose often cannot be discovered (or written about) until the image’s context, symbols and meaning are understood. However, this is not always the case, as some images have a rhetorical purpose that is blatantly obvious (consider the Uncle Sam “We Want You!” military posters in which the rhetorical purpose of the image is obviously to convince someone to join the military) and the chain of understanding works from purpose back to context.

Establishing Context

As with any type of reading you do, you should always attempt to understand context. Often relevant outside information that you, as a reader, possess about a particular image can bring your rhetorical understanding of a particular image into focus. This outside information might include a knowledge of when the image was created or captured (does it date, for example, from the Vietnam-Era, post-9/11, or during the Second World War?), a knowledge of where the image was originally located (was it in a magazine, on the side of a bus, or the cover of TIME magazine?), or the individual/group responsible for the image (was it created by PETA, the U.S. military, the GOP?). The answers to these questions can inform your understanding of how to understand the symbols, meaning and purpose of a particular image.

Understanding Symbols

Another step in the process of reading images is identifying and decoding the symbols found in the image. An image is often made up of several symbols that can clue the sharp reader in to just what it is this image really means and/or its rhetorical purpose. A symbol refers to something beyond itself—symbols represent ideas that seemingly may not, at first glance, seem related to symbols themselves. You know probably dozens of traditional symbols and what they represent: doves as a symbol of peace, water as a symbol of rebirth, fire as a symbol of intense emotion—particularly anger or lust—the color grey as a symbol of depression. And images often manipulate these traditional symbol relationships as a way of creating meaning. Though these symbols are often utilized in a fairly straightforward way, in some cases the symbols may relate to their meaning in a much less clear way. This is when context becomes especially useful.

For example, if you know that the famous image of the Tiananmen Square Massacre—a solitary man standing directly in the way of an oncoming tank—is a photograph taken during a peaceful student rebellion against the practices of the Chinese government, the seemingly odd and unrelated symbols of man and tank are given clear meaning: the solitary man can be understood as representing resistance or determination, while the tank is a symbol of power and authority. Without understanding context, you might be unable to decode these symbols and merely find the image strange.

Moreover, the spatial relationship between symbols within a particular image can itself be a symbol (very confusing). An example might make this clearer: you are tragically reading US Weekly while waiting for your perpetually late composition instructor. You notice a new advertisement for cologne in which a male figure, centrally located within the image, stands, while a female figure, gazing up at his face, crouches near his legs. The relationship of the male character and the female character seems sexual and definitely dominated by the male precisely because the female character is nearly sitting at his feet. In this image, the way the figures are placed in relation to one another conveys more meaning than the figures do on their own.

Meaning

How can we decidedly say, “This is what a particular image means”? A claim regarding the meaning of an image is always a matter of some controversy; however, sometimes an image (particularly if it is an advertisement for a product) has a distinguishable and identifiable central theme or message. To return to the fictional cologne ad, we might say that the meaning of the image is that any male that wears this cologne will have sexual power over those around him.

But oftentimes an image has multiple meanings and requires serious thought on the part of the individual attempting to articulate those meanings and their relationships to one another. The Tiananmen Square image mentioned above, for example, may have several meanings that depend very much on your interpretation of the interaction of the symbols within the image and your own understanding of Chinese culture: Is the man pictured a courageous dissident or a troublemaker? Does the tank represent oppression or defense?

Purpose

Dealing with an image’s purpose may well be the final aspect of your “reading” of an image. An image may have a wide range of rhetorical purposes from the very specific—say, changing seat belt laws for children—to the very broad—say, promoting the idea that everyone should recycle. And being able to effectively articulate an image’s rhetorical purpose is at the heart of decoding image.

If you can discover that a particular image was created during the Vietnam War era, contains several symbols which seem to relate to unchecked violence, and whose central meaning seems to be something along the lines of “War is hell,” it seems likely that the image was created for the purpose of promoting resistance to involvement in the Vietnam conflict. Similarly, if you realize quite quickly that the image at which you are staring is an advertisement for a new and improved type of housecleaning product, then you will have little trouble identifying the purpose of that image as merely attempting to convince you to buy that particular product.

The postmodern world has become increasingly visual. Being able to quickly assess and deconstruct an image is a vital skill which helps us to critically think about rhetorical strategies in a more specific and defined way.