Arellano-Purposive Communication Lesson 5
Arellano-Purposive Communication Lesson 5
Lesson Learning Outcomes: At the end of the learning engagement you should
be able to:
Analyzing Advertisements
Perhaps in one of your courses in basic education, you have been assigned to
hold a photo essay activity which tells a story using the medium of photography. This
kind of activity requires you to analyze photographs, which consequentially enhances
further your media literacy. Journalistic photography is another form of multimodal text
which uses a combination of meaning-making systems. Since photographs are often
considered as truthful representation of the world- history, politics, education, religion,
traditions, customs architecture, etc., we ought to think critically about the images that
we encounter in our lives. Although photojournalists possess their own point of view in
their own work, it is still important to view photographs with a critical eye.
In analyzing journalistic photography, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company (2008) suggested that we consider these questions:
1. What is the subject and angle of the photo essay? What is the essay’s
message?
2. Describe the photos in the essay. Which images are particularly memorable
to you? Explain your reason.
3. Do the photos appeal to your emotions? Are they intended to make you feel a
certain way?
4. Is the photo essay objective? If not, in what way is it biased?
5. Do captions or text accompany the photos? What do they say? Do the words
and images effectively tell the story?
6. In your opinion, does the photo essay do a good job of telling you about an
important event or issue? Is there anything you think the photographer could
have done differently?
Dictionary.com (2019) defines visual arts as the arts created primarily for visual
perception, as drawing, graphics, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts as
opposed to music, drama, and literature. As a multimodal text, the evaluation of visual
arts aims to appreciate and understand the visual choices the artist used in creating the
artwork. Aside from discussing the formal elements such as color, line, texture and size,
visual arts analysis may also include the artwork’s historical foundation.
Analysis of visual arts provide students with better understanding and greater
appreciation of the arts- often considered as subject for the elite- as it helps them break
the obstacle that they feel when they encounter art. Prior to analyzing visual arts, they
may be encouraged to visit a local museum or gallery or even make them watch in class
a video about artists and art organizations to throw light on how to evaluate artworks.
According to Sweetland Center for Writing (2019) at University of Michigan,
visual arts typically consist of three components: Context is the information relevant to
the creation of the artwork, including the time period and the artist’s background; Form
consist of the artwork’s formal elements such as color, line, texture and size; and
Content is the issue or subject matter addressed in the artwork.
Writing Studio (n.d.) at Duke University explained that in writing a visual arts
analysis, “you must look closely at an art object- or at a photograph of an art object- and
translate your visual observations into written text. However, a visual analysis does not
simply record your observations. It also makes a claim about the work of art.” It also
outlined the actions to take in visual arts analysis as follows:
1. Observe the artwork and write down your observations. Be precise with
composition, colors, textures, size, space, and other visual and material
attributes of the artwork. Go beyond your first impressions.
2. Formulate a main claim. Reflect on the overall organization of the work of art.
Consider how formal elements impact the meaning of the artwork. Relate this
work to other works you have studied.
3. Support your main claim with visual details. Analyze the form of the artwork.
Address only those elements relevant to your main claim. In other words, explain
the significance of your choices for your main claim. Use vocabulary words
mentioned in class (Writing Studio, n.d.).
Study the following example of visual arts analysis by Adrian Lopez taken from
Analyzing Artwork (Art Criticism) at https://sites.google.com/a/hbuhsd.edu/ib-
art/analyzing-artwork
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