Ailsa Catherine

2009

1989-90

Notion of Family

2009

The Brown Sisters

1985

Ben James and His Wife, Wales 1953

1956

Seattle Washington, 1985

1999-2002

2005-2011

1984

In Roland Barthes's Rhetoric of an Image he discusses different ways messages are conveyed through the use of images. I found this reading to be extremely insightful, and very helpful when thinking about my current project. I very rarely uses text in my work, and in doing so, I am experiencing difficulties. This reading really made me think about the different messages I am going to be portraying, some though the images and others through the text. His analysis of the image of the groceries was particularly interesting to me, especially when he pointed out that people from France and versus people from the rest of the world, particularly Italy, would read the image completely differently, and it is not just because of the language the text is in. I have been thinking a lot about how different people will read my piece when it is complete, and I think this reading has made me worry a little less about that, because no matter what I do, every viewer is going to read it differently.