How test can change the meaning of an image and the emotion of an image.
When you look at an image we each have our own instinctive response to it regarding its meaning and emotion. This is all dependent on each individual and the unique lives we lead. Our lives, memories, interactions and thoughts that all shapes us differently effect the way in which we interoperate things and result in different opinions. When you take an image like the one bellow and asked a selection of people to give a description of it, it is most probable that you will receive a mid range of ideas and thoughts. This is because when looking into the emotions created as a result of this image without anything to guide the audience, it is likely they will look back into their own lives at memories of maybe a similar holiday home they stayed at or a photograph from a newspaper story, or a film they once saw. These different memories could create different feelings within the audience and as a result in interoperating the image for example negatively or positively, create feelings of happiness or regret, absolutely anything, because it is all left down to the individual. The differences in our lives will thus create stark differences in responses to an image. However if you were to add text to this image you could entirely change the emotions stirred amongst the audience as you are directly leading them to think what you think about it.
This is the same when text can be used to change not only the emotions people feel from an image but also the meaning of what the image is. By adding a headline of ‘murderer’s hide-out’ above this photograph the context is automatically changed from is there was ‘historic landmark laid waste’.
With the image bellow without any text what do you automatically think the context is? Or more importantly what do you assume of the people within it? The prisoners could they be thieves and murderers, or could they be political prisoners in a fascist regime. Without language accompanying the images we cannot say for certain but are left to make our own opinions. However just the smallest piece of information like a date and location could drastically change what the image is.
It is this that allows for the abuse of power/responsibility whereby an image can be taken out of its actual context and placed within a fabricated one. For example the suns reporting of the Hilsburgh disaster in 1989, where pictures of innocent men women and children being crushed to death were used to create a story about football hooligans abusing police officers and petty theft.
With the image bellow without any text what do you automatically think the context is? Or more importantly what do you assume of the people within it? The prisoners could they be thieves and murderers, or could they be political prisoners in a fascist regime. Without language accompanying the images we cannot say for certain but are left to make our own opinions. However just the smallest piece of information like a date and location could drastically change what the image is.
It is this that allows for the abuse of power/responsibility whereby an image can be taken out of its actual context and placed within a fabricated one. For example the suns reporting of the Hilsburgh disaster in 1989, where pictures of innocent men women and children being crushed to death were used to create a story about football hooligans abusing police officers and petty theft.
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