Reading and Writing About Images

I really liked this essay, and not just because it was short with lots of pictures (I'm a total picaholic), but because of how true it was. A picture really does speak a thousand words. The essay was right, though, in that most people usually don't look twice at a picture to give it some good, hard thought. It made me laugh when it said, "we urge you to analyze all images," because it's pretty sad when we need to be told to look deeper at things.

The essay gave some pairs of pictures to analyze and compare. My two favorite were John Wayne next to Jackie Chan and the arquitectural comparisons. When I think of John Wane, three words come to mind: cool, calm, and collected. He's a very confident individual, or at least in the movies. He was a true cowboy and boy, could he use that gun of his. When I think of Jackie Chan, I think of comedy, and I'm ready to have a good laugh. He just looks absurd in a cowboy hat, pretending to hold a gun. It just tops it off that he has a huge goofy grin on his face, holding up his award.

When I saw the columns the first thing I noticed was, of course, how they differed in looks. The bottom one triumphs hands down with it's beauty. It's very modern and very clean, while the other is shabby and run down. However, the essay asks us to look past first impressions and really give it some second thought. Now I love arquitecture, so looking at the top colums again, I can't help but respect the people back then for building this amazing place that's held together quite nicely for how old it looks. It stands just fine on it's own. That run down place represents culture and history. The bottom one, to me, represents how far we've come. Also, that we recreate things out of respect for the things that used to look like how it looks now.

I thought all the comparisons told a story and it was pretty cool looking more in depth at them, but those were my favorites.