Compositional Interpretation
Rose calls her approach 'compositional interpretation', it is a method of describing the appearance of an image using a detailed vocabulary. The method depends on what the theorist and curator, Irit Rogoff calls 'the good eye', it is a way of looking that is not methodologically explicit but which produces a very specific way of describing images. The method looks at images for 'what they are' rather than what they do or how they are used. In art history, this approach is known as 'connoisseurship'. The art historian Eric Fernie describes connoisseurship as 'the acquisition of extensive first-hand experience of works of art with the aim, first, of attributing works to artists and schools, identifying styles and influences, and second, of judging their quality and hence their place in a canon.'
The 'good eye' focusses mainly on the site of an image itself in order to judge its 'quality' and understand its significance; it pays some attention to the production of images, particularly their technologies (materials and technique), but is mostly concerned with the the image's compositional modality - the specific material qualities of an image: content, colour and spatial organisation. Rose suggests that this approach can be problematic: visual images do not exist in a vacuum and looking at images for 'what they are' ignores the ways in which they are produced and interpreted through social practices. Although this method is useful - and perhaps crucial - for any discussion of images, Rose notes that compositional interpretation does not reflect on its own practices, something she sees as being crucial to a visual methodology. Rose suggests that the 'visual scrutiny' of compositional interpretation is best used as a starting point alongside other types of analysis.
Rose breaks down the compositionality of the image into components that provide a framework for analysing an image. Although these components can be separated, they are, in practice, rarely ever completely distinct from each other.
1. Content
What does the image show?
2. Colour
Colour can be described by hue, saturation and value. Hue is the actual colours in an image. Saturation refers to the purity of colour in relation to its appearance in the colour spectrum. Value is the lightness or darkness of a colour.
The effects of colour in a image should be considered - colour can be used to highlight certain elements of an image, for example.
How harmonious the colours in an image are should also be noted - are the colours contrasting or are they blended from similar values or hues?
The relationship between hues, values and saturations will affect how natural the image appears, which can alter the viewer's perception of how 'realistic' the image appears.
3. Spatial organisation
The organisation of space within an image and how this places the viewer in relation to the content of the image.
How do objects within the image relate to each other? Are some objects connected? Are some in isolation? What do the lines that connect the objects look like? Are they static or dynamic?Do they create a rhythm? What are the effects of these connections?
The space within the image should be considered: width, depth, interval and distance. Is the space simple or complicated? How does perspective work in the image? An image can have different effects depending on the manipulation of perspective and how that alters the position of the viewer in relation to the image.
The 'logic of figuration' is the 'designing of the position of the viewer' in relation to an image: the spatial and temporal organisation of an image positions the viewer either inside or outside of an image, it tells us where we are and offers a clue of how to read an image. The effects of geometrical perspective can alter a reading of an image: frontal angles engage the viewer with their directness more than oblique angles; if the viewer appears to look down into the image from a height they are given power (conversely, if they look from below, they feel inferior); distance can also be suggested through perspective with close-ups suggesting an intimacy with the subject of the image.
The visual organisation of looks and gazes in an image has effects, producing a specific relation between image and viewer. Images have a range of viewers - addressed, implied and represented - Mieke Bal calls these the 'focalizers' of an image. If the viewer can look in the same way as one of the focalizers in the image, they will have a strong identification with the subject matter of the image.
4. Light
Light is related to the colour and spaces of an image. The type of light - candlelight, daylight, moonlight, electric light etc - will affect the saturation and value of the hues in an image. The illusion of three dimensional space as created by geometrical perspective can be heightened by the use of light sources. Light can also highlight certain elements within an image.
5. Expressive content
The expressive content of an image is its 'feel' - 'the combined effect of subject matter and visual form'. Breaking an image into its component parts - spatial organisation, colour, content, light - does not capture the look of an image. In order to evoke the affective characteristics of an image it may be necessary to use imaginative and expressive writing.
Rose notes that although it is always necessary to consider the expressive content of an image, not all visual culture critics agree on its significance and the reaction to it should not obscure other issues concerning the meaning of the image.
Conclusion
The visual scrutiny of compositional interpretation is useful for becoming familiar with an image - by describing its content, colour, spatial organisation, light and expressive content. This is useful as a first stage of understanding an image and for describing its visual impact. This method, with its concern for the specific of an image, can also begin to say something about the effects of that image on a viewer.
Rose suggests that this method has some shortcomings: it does not encourage discussion of the production of an image (other than the image's technological or compositional modalities); and it does not ask how the image might be used, understood and interpreted by multiple viewers - moreover it does not consider the particularity of any other interpretation. Rose suggests that this methodology is best used with other methodologies, for example, with a semiotic reading of an image.
[1] Rose, Gillian (2007) Visual Methodologies, London, Sage Publications