Analyzing visual texts
You can follow these guidelines to read any kind of text created by human beings, from a scholarly article for a research project to a prehistoric cave painting or an Instagram image. You may be at least as accustomed to reading visual texts as you are to reading words, whether or not you take time to make a formal analysis of what you see. But pausing to look closely and reflect on how a visual text works is a useful exercise that can make you more aware of how visuals convey information.
Following is a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph (by Craig F. Walker of the Denver Post) and its caption. This image appeared as part of a series documenting the experiences of a Colorado teenager, Ian Fisher, who joined the U.S. Army to fight in Iraq. See an annotated student analysis of the image.
During a weekend home from his first assignment at Fort Carson, Colorado, Ian walked through a Denver-area mall with his new girlfriend, Kayla Spitzlberger, on December 15, 2007, and asked whether she wanted to go ring shopping. She was excited, but working out the financing made him nervous. They picked out the engagement ring in about five minutes, but Ian wouldn’t officially propose until Christmas Day in front of her family. The couple had met in freshman math class but never really dated until now. She wrote to him during basic training and decided to give Ian a chance. The engagement would end before Valentine’s Day.
Student Writing: Analysis of a visual text
Student Writing: Critical analysis of graphic literature (Shuqiao Song)
Talking the Talk: Visual texts