Teaching Visual Literacy to students of Communication

Abstract

This paper discusses the difficulty of teaching visual literacy to students of Communication whose visual skills are compromised by an overexposure to images rather than a lack of visual experience. One of the challenges involved in the acquisition of visual literacy is to learn to think through images, a form of response which requires a capacity for reflection that can only come from a rounded understanding of the arts in general, as well as a solid grounding in visual culture; thus, study of the history of literature and the traditional arts is fundamental to the development of refined visual skills. This paper draws on the views expressed by Peter Fuller in Seeing Through Berger (1988), a strong critique of John Berger’s bestselling work Ways of Seeing. Fuller argues that Berger undermines the importance of the study of traditional arts subjects (albeit only implicitly), and that the lack of such study weakens students’ visual skills, above all, in terms of critical reflection and response. Fuller’s remarks, which address the challenges facing those teachers involved in teaching fine arts, are of equal relevance in communication, field in which I am concern at the moment.

Key words: visual ecology, art criticism, Communication, cultural studies, media and museums, reproducibility and aura, Berger, Fuller.