Introduction
Your contributions to the discussion are graded on how well you understand the main ideas and terms you have studied in the unit and how effectively you can use them to ask and answer questions.
Instructions
In Unit 1, we considered the relationship between the title Their First Murder and a photograph from the 1940s by Arthur Fellig (known as Weegee) as an example of how words and images interact. It seems appropriate to return to this picture now using the theories you have encountered in Unit 2.
Hall argues that representations depend on two things to make meaning: shared conceptual maps and sets of rules called codes. Identify some of the visual codes or conventions at work in Their First Murder that try to fix meaning and describe how they do this.
Conventional understandings of both truth and photography are implicated in what Sturken and Cartwright call “the myth of photographic truth” (2001, p. 17). How is this idea relevant to interpreting Weegee’s image?
Part B: Short Essay
Instructions
Write a short informal essay (approximately 1000 words) on one of the following topics. Be sure that you are presenting the concepts in your own words and that you include current information. (You may use “I” when it seems appropriate.)
Follow conventional format for preparing your essay and citing sources. Check with your Open Learning Faculty Member regarding preferred documentation style (i.e., APA, MLA, and Chicago Manual of Style). For guidance on various aspects of conducting research and writing essays and research papers, consult the detailed information in Study Room.
If you have any questions about the assignment, consult your course Open Learning Faculty Member. When you have completed the assignment, submit it to your Open Learning Faculty Member for comments and evaluation.
In everything you write please remember that, in visual studies, we’re concerned with the image and the viewing experience (yours and others’). How, what, and why does this cultural product signify? To whom? We’re NOT interested in art history’s preoccupations: the artist, the creative act, and trying to guess her psychological state or her “artistic intentions.”
Note
Keep a copy of your assignment before submitting it to your Open Learning Faculty Member for evaluation. That way, you have a copy to refer to during a telephone conversation or email conference with your Open Learning Faculty Member. Also, in the unlikely event that your assignment is lost, you will have an extra copy of your work. Today, many student writing manuals suggest that students keep copies of all early drafts of their work as well, to protect themselves against mistaken charges of plagiarism.
Essay Topics
- Read Sturken and Cartwright’s description of the still life
by Pieter Claesz carefully. What pictorial strategies are at work in this
image to convince you to accept the objects depicted there as “real”? Your
first task is to identify the illusionistic devices (or cues that
reference our visual experience of things in the real world). We recognize
these as signifiers of position, volume, depth, texture, etc. and use them
to endow painted shapes on a flat surface with those properties. Claesz’s
seemingly casual arrangement of objects is, in fact, carefully contrived. Consult
the document below and find one example of each of the tactics listed
(composition, cropping, modeling, depictions of light and shade and the
five perspective techniques) in the painting. Describe it in detail. Think
about how such a device operates and why it works. Finally, address the
following questions: What’s involved in this process for you, the viewer,
when you recognize a cue and relate it to your own experiential knowledge?
(For instance, the lip of the wine glass is flat and oval in the painting,
but we know that such a glass is three-dimensional and round.
Consequently, we “fill in” its volume and actual shape.) Think about and
describe how you do this. Conclude by posing a few queries of your own
about our concept of “realism.”
- Composition: “Realistic” pictures are usually organized to conduct the observer’s gaze in an indirect fashion from foreground to middle ground to background. This measured trajectory is most often a pattern of diagonal elements that slows the progress of the eye and reinforces the sense of visually “entering a space” behind and beyond the picture plane gradually and incrementally (i.e. by stages)
- Picture plane: The term dates from the Renaissance conception of the picture’s surface as a window through which we, as spectators, view an imagined scene. This conceptual model dominated two-dimensional representations until the mid-nineteenth century. More extreme instances of illusionism may include elements that seem to pierce the picture plane and “project” from that “environment” into ours.)
- Modeling: The Renaissance introduced the convention of a fixed source of strong illumination outside the frame, coming from the upper left. This formula became standard because part of a figure or object appears to be well lit while the other is in shadow, contributing to an illusion of three-dimensionality.
- Depictions of Light and Shade: Representing highlights, reflections, degrees of shadow, etc. combines with modeling to reference our familiarity with the properties of a wide variety of materials and textures.
- Cropping: an image is “cropped” when whatever it depicts is intersected, apparently randomly, by the frame. Since we imagine the scene continuing outside its perimeters, the impression is created that the representation is an informal and arbitrary “slice of life”.
Perspective Techniques:
- Stacking: What is represented higher in an image is understood to be further away.
- Overlapping: Anything rendered as partially obscured is presumed to be behind whatever overlaps it.
- Foreshortening: Anything that isn’t parallel to our line of vision i.e. that is angled away from it, appears distorted. Think, for instance of the way a foot looks in profile compared to its appearance when viewed from the front.
- Linear Perspective: Linear perspective is based on the optical illusion of lines converging on the horizon (e.g. railroad tracks). It also involves regular diminution in scale. Renaissance paintings often include rectangular tiles rendered as trapezoids getting smaller in the “distance” to stimulate/simulate an illusion of receding “space.”
- Atmospheric (or Aerial) Perspective: Hazier, less distinct, and bluer imagery is understand as more distant. This simulates the interposition of air or atmosphere between whatever we’re viewing and us. An example familiar to most of us is the appearance of hills or mountains in the distance.
- Read Sturken and Cartwright’s account of how ideological considerations informed the portrait of O.J. Simpson chosen for the cover of Time in 1994 (2001). Find (and reproduce) a photograph you believe does similar representational work and perform your own analysis. (Be sure to paste the image into your paper and cite its source in the same way you would cite any other quoted material.) Write a careful and precise visual analysis, specify which dominant or ruling-class ideology (or ideologies) you believe are being promoted/reinforced and make clear connections between the visible characteristics of the image and your interpretations of how they signify ideologically. Note: Ideologies are belief systems often designated by words ending in the suffix “ism” e.g. capitalism, corporatism, consumerism, communism, fascism, imperialism, militarism, racism, sexism, etc.
Note:
Pieter Claesz’s Still Life with Stoneware Jug, Wine Glass, Herring, and Bread is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. You can find a high-quality colour reproduction on their website. A link is provided in the websites section of the Resources area of this course, located on the navigation bar on the left-hand side of this screen.
Criteria for Evaluating Essay Assignments
Here is a set of criteria that will form the basis for evaluating essay assignments.
Substance (75 per cent)
- The essay provides evidence of critical thinking and presents an informed and thoughtful discussion.
- Research sources are relevant, current, and credible. They are clearly documented in the paper.
- The introduction explains the purpose of the paper and the issue or issues you will address. This can take the form of a question or questions.
- The body develops your enquiry by providing explanations/information and organizing ideas and examples as clearly and directly as possible.
- The conclusion summarizes the learning that has taken place through writing the paper; it also presents a (tentative) position statement and/or suggests direction for future research. Again, queries might be more suitable here than assertions.
Writing Style and Format (25 per cent)
- Paragraphs are coherent, with transitions between ideas.
- Sentences are grammatically correct; words are chosen for accuracy and impact.
- The writing follows the conventions of spelling and mechanics (punctuation, etc.).
- The format follows the documentation style (i.e., APA, MLA, Chicago Manual of Style) accurately and consistently.
