Practices of Looking–Pages 26-46

        In this section of the book the meaning and value of images is defined and explained. Before reading this section I knew and felt like I understood the basics of meaning and value. I knew that everything has meaning and everything has value, they can just come in different ways to different people. What was helpful in my understanding of the meaning of images was the comparison between denotative and connotative meanings within a image. The example the book used was of the Nike swoosh. The denotative meaning of the swoosh is that when we visually see the swoosh we automatically know that it is the symbol for Nike and the connotative meaning is that when we see the swoosh we think about its quality and popularity among consumers. There is no way of knowing any of this if we didn't already know how to decode the images we see around us everyday. Elements such as color, shades of black and white, tone, contrast, composition, depth, perspective, and style of address to the viewer can all help in relying the images we see to mean different things when put into different contexts. There is a similar process that goes with the value of an image as well. "Images do not have value in and of themselves; they are awarded different kinds of value—monetary, social, and political—in particular social contexts" (pg. 34). I feel like value can be a tricky thing to grasp, but it is so arbitrary varying from person to person that images can have different values just because someone put them there. I really liked that the book brought up the point that many people believe that just because a work of art is in an expensive gallery or displayed in a special way it gives that work of art value, but this is not necessarily the case. Different pieces of art can have more or less value to different people regardless of the state in which they are displayed.