Week 4 ---- More than words: Visual Literacy

Sometimes, pictures are much more powerful than words and could engrave on people's mind profoundly. What picture is differ from words is that it is not that explicit. It requires reader to interpret the underlying meaning themselves based on their intelligence, ideologies and experience. I have found this picture on the Internet recently.

source:

http://www.nownews.com/2011/02/19/91-2690269.htm

This picture was drawn by a Chinese painter who now lives in Canada. Many discussions arose because of this picture as it contains so many underlying meanings. People claim that the girl on the left is Japan, the girl facing us is America, the girl who lies on the floor is Russia, the girl who we cannot see her face is China and the girl standing on the right is Taiwan. Taiwan is not qualified to play this game with the others, she just keep looking at America while America is looking back to her too as if they are giving signals to each other. Russia seems doesn’t care about the game but actually she is changing mahjong with China and her legs are touching America. Japan only focus on her mahjong without noticing what the others are doing. If it’s a game that players have to take off one piece of clothing if they lose, then Japan has already took of all of hers. America looks so noble with her clothes but actually she has her bottom line shown already while China and Russia haven’t. There are still many arguments about the picture since the interpretations are quite subjective.

What I want to point out from this picture is that it really shows the fact that pictures are very powerful at some point especially when it’s about sensitive topics like political issues.

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Other thoughts about photo:

There is a trend in Hong Kong that people love to take high quality photos with DSLR. When you walk around the tourists spots, it is very easy for you to find people taking pictures with a professional DSLR. I have many friends who have bought a DSLR. They are not good at but interested in photography. DSLR is not cheap at all. Many of my friends have to save up money in order to get one. Of course, after they have got one, they have to go out and take good pictures with their gadgets.

But what would happen to the photos then? In the old time, people used to print out their photos, put them carefully into a photo album and then take them out for a look from time to time.

With the advance in technology, people nowadays just save up their photos in folders in “My Pictures”

It is more convenience for them to send them to friends or to post it on the Internet. However, if people didn’t get the backup of the photos (actually I am that stupid person), once the computer is out of order suddenly, and then all the precious photos taken by a high quality camera would be lost forever! Therefore people turn to facebook. It seems safer to upload photos there. Even if the computer is out of order, you can still get the photos back.

It brings out a negative effect that the older generations cannot take out the “photo album” and stroke the faces on the photos anymore. Privacy is another big issue. People can tell what kind of person you are from your photos. You may also be tagged in a photo in which you looked extremely ugly. People will remove tag for sure. Then, can the photos reflect the truth anymore? Or they’re just decorations for people to beautify their personalities online?