Due Oct 28

3-¶ Initial Description and Analysis

For class Flesh out two-column notes listing and accounting for details from one of the photographs linked from the homepage of the coursedocs website. If you focus on the same photo as you discussed in the last class session, feel free to use your prior list of details as a starting point.

Aim to collect AT LEAST 20 distinct details. I know that sounds like a lot, but don't forget that, besides stuff in the photo, you can note details OF the photo: focus, framing, color, exposure. Finally, consider details left out of the photo: what we don't see but are made to wonder about (as, for example, the father missing from "Migrant Mother").

Once you have your list, re-order it so as to group related details under headings. Then, in the right hand column, say something about why that heading matters, how that group of details contributes to the photo's message and/or impact. As we discussed in lecture, grouping details together is known as "strand analysis," in the sense that you're identifying and naming the strand that links those details together. For example, in "Migrant Mother" one might group the children's threadbare clothing, the family's tent, and the baby's dirty face under the heading "grinding poverty."

In lecture, I also mentioned Binary Analysis. We will talk more about Binaries in an upcoming class, but to briefly clarify a somewhat rushed point, a Binary consists of a pair of related but contrasting Strands. In "Migrant Mother," details from the children might be gathered together under the heading of Vulnerability and details from the mother under the heading of Strength. Thus, rather than discussing both mother and kids together as elements of a single strand, "Responsibility," we might choose instead to discuss the mother's Strength and the children's Vulnerability as separate strands that combine in the binary, "Responsibility."

Many of the photographs lend themselves to binary analysis. Perhaps most obviously: Tank Man, Segregated Water Fountains, the Lynching in Marion Indiana. So the HW below prompts you to try out both.

To post below Using your two-column notes as a starting point, write a three-¶ sequence as follows:

1. ¶ giving a vivid initial description of the photograph. Open the ¶ with a one-sentence assessment of the photograph's message.
2. ¶ focusing on one strand of details (or perhaps two closely related strands). Open the ¶ with a one-sentence assessment of how that strand contributes to the photo's rhetorical impact on viewers.
3. ¶ focusing on a strand of details that stands in contrast to the prior ¶'s focus, thus forming the second half of a binary. Open the ¶ with a one-sentence assessment of how this new strand complicates the photograph's message.