Arguing with Images (assignment sheet)

WAM! (I don't think they use a fake cat in this--like, the whole time)

Great job on the stencil projects, all.

Arguing With Images

For this assignment you will draw from what we have studied about the persuasive power of imagery and create a series of images that exemplify the rhetorical principles explored in our readings. Your images will be self-created or appropriated and compiled from external sources, but each project will have a clear message to communicate. This insistence on clarity is meant to be tricky. You may find it difficult to "speak" explicitly let alone persuasively using only image as your communicative discourse. But, in the end, that is really the fun of this assignment.

You will be creating a photo essay as found in the Berger’s Ways of Seeing containing at least 20 images. This essay should, like Berger’s, have some sort of guiding principle or thread that holds the images together. Your images might tell a story, make a rhetorical argument, or create a more nebulous collage around a single theme or idea. Please use the online photo site of your choice to display these images and put a link to it on your blog.

For this project, consider the impact that text may have in changing the audience’s perception of your message. Use text very sparingly, if at all.

As before (but with a slight tweak), you will be required to write a reflection on the process of creating your piece (a bit different than a rational). Tell me about the difficulties and break-troughs you experienced as you went about the “writing” process. What was your original vision and how did that change as you went about creating your image series. Also please consider and include how our readings thus far have informed your work and how. Also, keep in mind the more "academic" tone of this reflection. I would like you to both post on your blog this response AND email me a Word document with your response in "essay" form. Again, due to a bit of syllabus confusion in this the quick-summer format, I am extending the due date of this project one day to Wednesday July 1st at 1pm when class begins.

This reflection should be approximately 500 words.

Please see me if you do not have easy access to a digital camera or if your phone does not have a camera on it.