We’ve spoken at some length now about writing about an image. I’ve compared our approach to a Reader Response (only of your response to a painting, photograph, or film, not a reading). I’ve also asked you to write about a Jacob Riis image to bring in for our next meeting. (Click the link to look at the “Fire escape” image). Remember, I’ve asked that you quote from Sante’s Low Life in your writing. This elevates your response- you become less of a passive spectator and more of an active analyst, able to bring meaning, information, and thoughtful analysis to your response- which increases your scholarly authority, and makes you sound smarter (if they’re not one and the same).
A couple other (more detailed) things about writing on the image:
It can be empowering to write about an image. In the world we live in, the depth and power of an image can be taken for granted by those who do not study and learn an appreciation of it. As audience members- passive spectators enjoying a film purely for the experience, not seeking greater comprehension, we may say “We liked it” or “It was boring”. As SCHOLARS, however, we seek a greater understanding of the work, and bring our outside knowledge and understanding of things like context, theme, intention to bear on our writing. This empowers us, and allows us more confidence in studying the world.
Images are intimidating. As I’ve made mention (too) many times, I’m a writer myself, and remember vividly my first attempts at writing about images. Writing about images intimidated me. Why? Because I was not confident in my immediate emotional response to them- I thought that that instinctive, reader-response-style reaction was limited and uneducated. Because of the great, extensive histories of art that I was only vaguely familiar with, and because of the people around me who seemed so eerily capable of taking it all in and spitting it back out with ease (I went to an art school.) But that instinctive response that we first have, whether it be our excitement at the fantasy of a painting or disgust at the brutality of a journalistic image, is intended by the artist (whether the artists wishes for your specific response is left to be questioned, but the artist is certainly soliciting a response, or they wouldn’t have shown you the work- they would have burned it), and therefore that instinctive response is useful to how we write about the image.
Describing an Image is an Opportunity to show what you think of an image.
Let me show you: The following is a sculpture of an HP Lovecraft monster.
Dagon from SOTA TOYS
The grotesque, brutally shaped maw of the beast seems fashioned of exposed flesh tightly wrapped over black bone- as if the creature might be in constant pain, and the tentacles, shiny and reptilian on the tops and translucent and fatty on the bottom, curl and slither upon themselves to chilling effect.
The points of articulation are well-hidden beneath the expertly-rendered joints of this awesome model. The open-faced maw and beady eyes effectively capture Lovecraft’s uniquely weird take on monsters. The painting of the model- from the effect of translucency on the skin to the pink, bony, crab-like hands, reflects only the most expert in craftsmanship.
See? I took each description as an opportunity to evoke a similar response in my reader that I had- this is what writing is all about.
Start with the image. It may seem simple, but what do you see? What is in the foreground, the background? How does the artist compose the image, color the image, and why? Note that you start by taking in the image passively, as a spectator, then ask the scholarly question, Why? And this takes you into the realm of speculation, of research, and of writing, hopefully.
