How The Signs That Can Be Present Within These Phenomena

The authors tell the reader that a picture must be interpreted like an essay or piece of writing. The motive and goal of the author or photographer must be figured out.

A desire to possess landscapes prevents us from noticing its beauty. The tautological didactic message “the camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing” excoriates humanity’s ignorance of landscape’s beauty due to our impulses to possess beauty via mediums such as cameras. Instead, we should try to notice elements and understand their construction. This is why Vincent van Gogh postulated that “the night is even more richly coloured than the day” – viewed as

Images gain their power from the factors and decisions surrounding the site of production, site of the image, and the site of audiencing (Rose). If an observer takes an image and considers the effects each of these sites has had on their own reading of the image’s meaning, the viewer’s resulting analysis of the image will be more a more complete evaluation. The image of “Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir at Glacier Point, Yosemite” captures a time and place in such a way that even a century after the image’s creation, students of visual studies can still use it to better understand how and where an image develops its meaning.

Landscape painting was a particularly effective vehicle for allegory because it allowed artists to make fictional subjects appear normal, conditioned, acceptable, or destined. Art was not just about the landscape, it actually allowed the spirit of the painter to come alive in their work. The allegory was for moral and spiritual concerns. The introduction to photography therefore impacted 19th century landscape in a manner that was found to be unacceptable because personal intertwinement of expression and emotion could not come from photography.

Authors’ manipulation of text type and their choice of language firmly enables an understanding of the relationship between both people and landscapes, with composers’ representations of these ideas being particularly significant. Alain de Botton’s multi-modal non-fiction text, The Art of Travel, allows his audience to be guided –as a new type of travel guide– through his philosophical notions on the inborn and vitalising relationship between people and landscapes, often leading to us uncover new truths. Whilst his use of both descriptive language and intertextuality allows his audience to even more fully appreciate this multidimensional relationship, often presented in a refreshing and thought-provoking light. Similarly, Tim Winton’s memoir

Returning to Benjamin, he writes that, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space” (Benjamin II) which corroborates the speaker of the poem’s stance that, “Meaning takes place in time” (Solie 38). Although Benjamin’s thoughts focus more on the ubiquity and lack of authenticity that occurs with mass image production and reproduction, “Bitumen” shares some of these concerns, tracing the development of modern proliferation of images from the first imagining techniques of Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce, to the “photochrome postcards” (32) of late 19th century, up to video- sharing websites. The speaker of “Bitumen” looks to construct a timeline of image mediation alongside the aestheticization of catastrophe. Even calamitous weather events, which “Bitumen” ties to the “unseasonable” (34) weather that results from global warming, becomes a sublime, photogenic spectacle with the ubiquity and quotidian character of modern image and film: “tornados on YouTube relieve us of our boredom” (“Bitumen” 33). The speaker of “Bitumen” argues that these mediations pacify rather than invigorate, and replace what should be fear and action with awe and

Visual language is a lens through which we categorise and interpret visual information in order to understand the world, society and the human condition. The process of reading the visual world relies on the assumption that the images and symbols in art can have inherent meaning. Visual literacy is based on an accumulation of knowledge that develops a repertoire of symbolic representations. Historical and cultural references and images can be viewed as a library of visual information that is continually added to as society and its communications evolve and change. Some past artistic symbols retain their currency whilst others lose their potency or relevance and fade from use over time. Through artistic symbolic

Focusing on the agricultural landscaping, as well as the its management, reality, and metaphor, Beilin utilized the landscape photography to further unpacking the meanings of the farmers’ photographs to create a more vivid atmosphere where famers, and policy makers could have more social interactions and make more proper in situ decisions. 18 farm families were given the chance to capture their landscape, and interpret their perceptions to not only the researcher, but their colleagues.

Within a situation based around a real landscape there may be many conflicting opinions perspectives, which can be emphasized further by the specific media of production used. An example of this in filmic media is how Giosue and, to and extent, the audience views the concentration camp in Life is Beautiful. The happy atmosphere Guido creates in juxtaposition to the place around him is captured through film and creates the two significantly different views of the camp. The journey to the Interior uses textual media and describes in detail a hill landscape, which Atwood links back to her subconscious. ‘The hills which the eyes make flat as walls’. The description of the real hills as a landscape creates the two different perceptions of the story, one as a visual representation that the reader can picture, and the other as a metaphor for Atwood’s mind, which connect the readers with her on a profound level. The media of production helps to portray certain attitudes towards landscapes, connecting the audience emotionally with the story and

Like the Abstract Expressionist paintings of the tormented artist son in Pasolini's TEOREMA (1968), the received cultural baggage and semiotic referentiality of the image is eliminated until all that remains is purest subjectivity of the spectator. And so, picture-making technology mediates reality only up to a point: once the threshold of referentiality has been crossed, the suspicion of a murder in the park gleaned from a series of enlarged photographs would seem to say more about Thomas' own paranoid state of mind than what his camera may or may not have

Photography has the ability to both expand and limit human vision due to its ability to capture human behavior on film, providing proof that events have taken place. This medium provides people with access to images they may have never been introduced before, allowing them to see things they may never see in their everyday life. However, because a picture only captures what is being shown to the camera, it can take away the context needed to fully understand the story behind the photo, blinding audiences to the truth.

Susan Sontag argues that photography allows people to retain or carry on with them what may have occurred in the past. Many people are beginning to travel for short periods of time for touristic purposes and it is often commonplace for travellers to take photographs. By doing so, they are not only documenting their trip but providing irrefutable evidence that trip has actually occurred. These photographs also allow people to dabble in past pleasures. For brief moments, the viewer can return to the place where the photograph was taken, reliving an entire experience. She adds that this dependence on cameras does not fade away as one goes on more vacations but remains. Its appeal is universal for both the high class who are enjoying an extravagant

Chapter 1 opens the book up by giving background to National Geographic and sets up the chapters to come. It also points out that photographs are not objective, Photographers chose what photos get to be seen and that captions that are added to them. Later in the chapter, the authors explain the process of producing images, their structure and content, as well as how the readers view the photographs. These

Child highlights within his semiotic studies the unseen messages that carry a significant amount of cultural, political and historical meanings. Photographs, numbers, words and colours and how they are positioned in a small scale delivers valuable messages to the “reader”. To analyse the stamps, Child discusses Peirce three part typology “The Trichotomy of Signs”, Index, Icon and symbol in which all three can work individually and blend together to deliver a symbolic meaning to the reader. (Child, 2005 p. 114).

“No Picture Content without Design.” — the statement Harald Mante made in his textbook The Photograph: Composition and Color Design. The notion has explained the characteristics of the photographer’s work. Harald Mante’s photography has a strong accent in its formal approach.