Writing diagnostic Ashley Peters 31 Jan 2014

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What is Visual Literacy ?

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What I read [ OBSERVATION ] What ( I think ) it means [ INTERFERENCE ] How it made me feel / How I responded [ OPINION ]

Thoughts

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To start with a joke, for me, since I got three parking tickets in two weeks, the colours in USA have a restrictive meaning, so red and yellow are bad colours here, colours to avoid. Globalisation or globalization ( a word that is unknown to my Mac and is red underlined though Apple have a major role in this story) , had brought people from different places, from far far away places, close together and I wont be surprised when I will see a commercial with some Eskimo people talking at a mobile phone and sharing some seal pictures on Facebook ( if that happened already I dont know ). But further than that, I think that the primary goal of globalisation is to uniform the varied cultures in order to react the same on a product or on a stimulus and to reduce the campaign and production costs. An example of different reaction to a product comes from Japan, a culture that was so many years solitary and is still developing by its own: few years ago I read that the Barbie dolls challenged serious problems with sales in Japan although that products had an immense success in Europe and USA, and after nalising market studies and after a lot of concerns, the producer reached a conclusion : the Japanese prefer the dolls with big eyes rather than dolls with small eyes so they modied their products and as an implication, the sales grew, so I guess that despite the goal of globalization , people are attracted by things that are different. But to get back to the differences that I felt in my currently adopting culture, I guess that the most intriguing for me was the feeling that I had last year when I was walking in Outer Mission drinking a diet Pepsi from a metal can ( I guess the Pepsi logo wasnt so easy to see )

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and a lady told me in spanish that I shouldnt drink on the street and few minutes later a mother pulled her baby from my way frightened. Here I found a lot of insurances for everything and people have a lot of worries and the major one is that they dont have insurance for something that might go wrong ( Ive made at least ve insurances in two weeks ). Another problem that I noticed here is the presence of the sugar in everything in large amounts and while smoking is discouraged, the consumption of sugar I highly encouraged although the bad consequences are well known. Other distinctions between our cultures are in generally particularities of architecture, road mapping and the building crescendo from the border of the city to its core. First time I came here, in the centre of San Francisco, my neck was hurting me after staying a lot with my eyes stuck on skyscrapers. What I liked most are the homeless people. I had the chance to talk with several and they amazed me with their culture and their knowings. I talked with them about photography, they gave me advices, once a guy asked me where I am from and after telling the name of my country he answered me : A! Romania! Bucharest!. And to answer my question of the paper, visual literacy is in my opinion, to see and feel things as they are without the altering power of habit, to be conscientious, to see and interpret things like you are seeing them for the rst time, like you are thirsty of seeing and hopefully, you will see them again and again and you will never stop see them as they are, because in my kind of photography the key is to not get use with things.

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