Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials

Rose, G. pub. Sage 2001 ISBN 076196665X

pp5-32

Gillian Rose is a cultural and feminist geographer and is currently Professor of Cultural Geography at the Open University.

1: An introductory survey of ‘the visual’

Rose introduces us to the ‘Cultural Turn’ – a shift in the way social processes, identities, change and conflict are being studied and understood. Throughout the chapter she refers to several different interpretations of ‘culture’ including:

“Culture … is not so much a set of things … as a process, a set of practices … concerned with the production and exchange of meanings…” (Hall, 1997)

She suggests that writers addressing the issues surrounding the nature of culture mostly agree that ‘the visual’ is central to the way Westernised society thinks about its culture.

We are surrounded by imagery – far more so than even our parents’ generation – and Rose argues that none of this imagery is ‘innocent’. “These images are never transparent windows on to the world. They interpret the world; they display it in very particular ways” (p6)

Rose helpfully explains for readers the difference between vision (what the human eye is capable of seeing) and visuality (the way we see). She calls visuality by another name, scopic regime, but points out that whichever term is used, what we see and how we see it are always culturally constructed.

The visual is presented as being central to our underestimating and interpretation of the world; we see before we can speak, and we interact with the world largely by seeing it.

Rose then takes us through the evolution of pre- to post-modernity, suggesting that visual imagery has not only become more evasive during this time but has also increased in importance as they way we understand the world and the basis on which western culture is grounded, to the point where seeing is knowing. (p8)

2. Visual culture: the social conditions and effects of visual objects

In the second section of this chapter, Rose introduces us to the study of visual culture. She acknowledges that this is a contentious term, viewed with scepticism by some writers, but guides us nevertheless to five aspects of visual culture which can be found in an analysis of the literature in this field:

1) Images themselves do something. An image is never completely passive – it will always have some kind of impact on the viewer, even if it is indifference. Images often do not stand alone without textual or some other form of reference, but even if they do there will be other forces at play – the locality, the circumstances of the display, the predisposition of the viewer…

2) A concern for the way images either reveal or hide social difference. Rose exemplifies this through discussion of a conservative party election poster depicting a black man wearing a suit. We are asked to decide whether the figure is a ‘black’ man or a ‘British’ man, according to political stance, and whether or not his sartorial choice is influential in what we think of him.

3) How images look and how images are looked at. We all look at images in different ways, bringing our own perspectives and belief systems to the task. Rose makes reference to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972) to suggest that “images of social difference work not simply by what they show but also by the kind of seeing that they invite”. (p12) Berger uses the example of paintings of female nudes to illustrate this. The nude, usually painted by a man, is there for men to look at – the woman becomes an object to be stared at. Rose concludes that the image inevitably positions the viewer in relation to the image – the viewer cannot be impartial or detached from the viewing.

4) Emphasis on how visual images are embedded in a much broader cultural context. The meaning of culture as ‘a whole way of life’ is proffered (p13) and it is suggested that the visual has become more important than written text and a means of conveying our ideas of the world. Rose suggests that if we broaden, and thereby weaken the notion of culture we run the risk of losing individualism under a mass of generalisations. The notion of culture as a set of ‘things’ rather than meanings prevents us from thinking about ‘ways of seeing’ and the relationship between the artefact and the person looking at it. So… culture lies not so much in the tangible as ‘”a range of meaningful social practices” where people and ‘things’ interact in order to define meaning.

5) What the audience brings to the image. No image can have validity without an audience, as it is the viewer who provides the meaning and ‘raison d’etre’ for the image’s production. When an image is created, the maker may well have an intention in mind, but it is never possible to impose the creator’s meaning on the audience other than by polite suggestion – the rest is out of his control.

3. Towards a critical visual methodology

In this section, Rose moves to discuss, in three parts, what she means by a critical approach to interpreting visual images:

She says that a critical approach takes images seriously, thinks about the social conditions and effects of visual images and considers the interpreters own way of looking at images. There is a tendency, she argues, for social scientists to treat images in too superficial a manner, which is a mistake because images have far more to offer than their immediately discernible contexts. The positionality of the viewer cannot be ignored: we cannot look at an image without bringing to bear our own set of circumstances, so Rose suggests that the viewer must reflect on his or her own way of seeing in order to understand how s/he is interpreting what is seen.

4. Towards some methodological tools: sites and modalities

Rose introduces us to the notion of sites and modalities. She says that there are three sites at which the meanings of an image are made, and three modalities, or aspects of the image, which can be found in any or all of the afore-mentioned sites. (p16)

The three sites are:

the site of the image’s production
the site of the image itself and
the site where it is seen by various audiences.

The three interlinking modalities are:

technological (a painting, photographs, cinema, the web…)
compositional (what the image contains - its subject matter – the way the image is set out, the dynamic range and gamut) and
social (an overarching term to encompass all the factors which influence how an image is viewed).

Hmmm…

Some links are more obvious than others, for example, the site of production will have strong associations with the technological modality, whereas the social modality is highly significant when considering the site of the audience.

Rose uses a Doisneau photograph to illustrate what she wants to say about the site of production:

An Oblique Look. Robert Doisneau. Paris, 1944

The image, called amongst other titles ‘An Oblique Look’ shows a man and a woman gazing into a shop window. The viewer’s point of view is from inside the shop. The woman is looking intently at a framed picture which, as it is facing towards her, is not visible to the viewer. The man, however, is looking at another image, that of a naked lady, which is on the side wall of the window display and thus clearly visible not only to him but to us as viewers. In the background some boys are playing in the street.

We do not know if the image was posed or not; the photographer certainly did ask people to pose for him in other photographs, but this one could well have been a genuine candid. (Rose seems to think that this is not the case as the figures in the background are out of focus – a spurious reason to my mind.) Had it been taken today, it would almost certainly have been candid, albeit a contrived one.

Regarding compositionality, Rose discusses the differences between street photography and social documentary; the former being designed to entertain, the latter to inform and possibly instigate action.

Rose suggests that her third modality, the social, is the most important aid to understanding images. In the case of the Doisneau photograph, and indeed all candid images, the viewer is the one in control “positioned as somewhat distant from and superior to what the image shows us”. (p22) Because we have more information than the subjects in the photograph, we have a certain power, a knowledge which the subjects cannot share. The photographer is arguably even more distance than the viewer – s/he is there merely to record the moment and leave the viewer to do the responding. Rose refers to Haraway who, in 1991, posited that street photography is a tough business and its patriarchal nature, by default, suggests that only men are suited to it. (Well I don’t know where that leaves me… or Diane Arbus… or Sae Kani… Annie Griffiths-Belt… the list goes on). Rose queries this (quite rightly) and argues that the attributes required for street photography (gut feeling, instinct) are actually those attributed to women more often than men so in that case, she says, “if masculinity might be said to be central to the production of street photography, it is a particular, rather complicated, kind of masculinity”. (p22)

This section of the text is of particular interest to me, as a (female) street photographer. I do feel that one has to have certain skills and attributes to do this kind of work (the ability to fade into the background one minute and develop and instant rapport with subjects the next; a degree of temerity in even the most unthreatening of situations; a sharp eye and fast reactions; a fondness for people-watching…) but none of these qualities is exclusively masculine: if they are then I’m in the wrong gender!

The second site in Rose’s model is the site of the image itself. In the Doisneau example, she argues that the compositional modality is the most significant at the site of the image. The composition of this photograph speaks volumes about its social context: the role of women, the way men behave when in the company of women, the position of the voyeur (us) and so on. Rose quotes Pollock’s (1988) assertion that as viewers we are “complicit with [the man’s] secret discovery of something better to look at” than the image which his wife is concentrating on. We are enjoying the deception with the man at the expense of the woman but, crucially, we are actually in a position of power over both of them as we watch the scene hidden as we are behind the window of the shop.

Rose’s third site, the site of the audience, expands further what we as viewers care to read into the photograph. There is absolutely no guarantee how any one individual will react to an image – this is completely beyond the control of the photographer however hard s/he tries to engineer a given response. We are forced into an act of deceit in the Doisneau photograph but we may or may not support the way the woman is at a disadvantage.

The social modality is presented as the most important aspect of audiencing images. Rose suggests that the context in which we see something affects our response to it, and gives examples of our behaviour in galleries, cinemas and in front of the television to illustrate how an audience reacts according not only to what is seen, but the context in which is it encountered.

There is a suggestion, debated by Rose, that the ability to appreciate works of art is class-and/or education-related, and that the contexts for viewing serious art (galleries, usually) are an exclusively middle-class environment.

Bibliography

Hall, S (1997) ‘Introduction’ in S. Hall (Ed.) Representations: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London. Sage pp1-12

Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.

Web-based references

Gillian Rose CV
A review of this book can be found here:

or as a .pdf:

Both links lead to: Lichtman, Marilyn (2002, August). Review note: Gillian Rose (2001). Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials [16 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [On-line Journal], 3(4). Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm

[Accessed 5/11/05].