When observing visual images, we can often recognize the capacity their to evoke emotions, identification and even stir the audience to activism. On the other end of the same spectrum, we can recognize the use of visuals in the creation of spectacle of self and other in a way that evokes nothing more than voyeurism and indifference.  A parallel axis examines the same issue from the point of view of the creator and asks what is the difference between cannibalistic photography (as Susan Sontag refers to it) versus mindful photography and whether these approaches for picture taking are related to the images’ ability to engage the audience. Questions of privacy versus exposure and the disciplining of the individual and society through visual documentation by ubiquitous technologies such cell phones and drones are related to and expand the above discussion from a more macro and social perspective.

In the first part of the semester we will get acquainted with the above questions and with a rhetorical tool kit that will enable us to analyze images. Some of the terms we will cover are (very) basic familiarity with color, light and form; the four master tropes  (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony), identification, circulation and appropriation. In the last part of the semester we will return to our fundamental questions through the analysis of visual texts such as street art, and images of pain and war.

Readings: Relevant texts will be uploaded to the moodle according to class program