Reading Pictures: An Introduction to Visual Literacy


In the first of a new mini-series on visual literacy for Books for Keeps, Piet Grobler discusses the effects of colour, medium and format.


say that books without pictures have no use, but I believe illustrations can reveal so much about a narrative. In order to best appreciate pictures that join words to tell stories, visual literacy is imperative.


A


A visually literate person has developed the capacity to read pictures, make sense of them and negotiate their ‘meaning’. Contemporary theorists agree that creators – of a picture book in our case – no longer have ownership of its meaning once the book has been published,


though


readers can try to grasp the meaning that they believe the author and/or illustrator intended.


Illustrators are very aware of the content they are illustrating and they choose their medium, technique and subject accordingly.


Even


lice’s irritation with books without pictures, at the start of Alice in Wonderland, has become a well-known tongue-in-cheek argument in favour of illustrations. I agree; perhaps I wouldn’t


Images by Clotilde Perrin, from Le colis rouge © Éditions Rue du monde (France), 2007.With the free agreement of the author and the publisher. All rights reserved.


though they create meaning, the illustrator’s processes or decisions are not always calculated, but spontaneous or subconscious. This is possible, because they are – consciously or not – visually literate. How do readers go about making sense of illustrations?


To begin with, we should acknowledge that we are already ‘reading’ illustrations in a fairly informed manner on a daily basis – like when we interpret images in the media (television, film, magazines, books, internet). We can use the knowledge that we subconsciously apply in


these cases, when we study a picture book. The ‘tools’ or ‘skills’ we use to read pictures] give us the language and, to a certain extent, a method, to talk about and share one or many more layers of meaning in picture books with children, students or other bibliophiles.


In this first of three articles on visual literacy, we look at the art elements that we consider when we read a picture book, like line, colour, texture and shape. They could also be called the ‘formal’ aspects. In the second article we’ll look at formal elements of the


14 Books for Keeps No.214 September 2015


Images by Ali Boozari from A Wolf and a Goat, Unpublished, Teheran, 2014 http://www.aliboozari.com/ All rights reserved.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34