Visual ""literacy""

People today are constantly bombarded with a wide variety of visual images - from television, advertisements, billboards and the cinema, as well as more conventional forms of visual art. Faced with such a visual overload, how do we interpret these images? What causes us to respond emotionally to these pictures? And how does this response differ for visual devices such as close-ups, camera angles and flashbacks? Providing a foundation for answering these and other questions surrounding the debate over "visual literacy", this book takes readers through the four major conceptual levels of visual understanding: imparting visual literacy as a prerequisite for comprehending visual media; creating awareness of the general cognitive consequences of visual literacy; becoming alert to visual manipulation; and promoting aesthetic appreciation of the images seen.