Chapter 4 of reading images

In chapter 4, Kress and Leeuwen discussed the interaction between the producer and the viewer of the image that involves the represented participants and interactive participants. Represented participants are the people, things, and places that depicted in images and interactive participants are people who make sense of images and communicate with each other. Usually the producers are not physically present when the viewers interpret the image, so there is a disjunction between the producers and viewers. The author stated that “the image itself and a knowledge of the communicative resources that allow its articulation and understanding a knowledge of the way social interactions and social relations can be encode in images” (p115). In order to make the interactive meanings between the producers and viewers, there are different communicative functions to encode the image visually. For instance, the size of frame to the choice between close up, medium shot and long shot is one dimension to the interactive meanings of image. The distance also determines the social relations. Through the patterns of distance, people can be portrayed as friends, intimates or strangers.

In addition, the perspective of the image is another way to bring relations between producers and viewers. The selection of an angle implies the expressing subjective attitudes that are social determined. The point of view is the position of the viewer in relations to the image including subjective and objective images (image with or without central perspective). In subjective images, the viewer can see what there is form a particular angle, and in objective images the image reveals everything there is to know. Besides, the horizontal angle and vertical angle convey different relation between the represented participants and viewers. “Horizontal angle is a function of the relation between the frontal place of the image producer and the frontal plane of the represented participants” (p134). The Horizontal angle can encode the meanings of image as detachment and involvement. Moreover, in terms of vertical angle, a high angle makes the subject look small and insignificant, and a low angle makes it looking imposing and triumph (p140). Thus through the angle and social distance, viewer can make sense and relation to the represented participants in a certain way.