In all the years that I have written this weblog (go here for the bulk of it) I have never (I’m fairly sure) discussed visual rhetoric. Perhaps that’s odd because I began my career as a photojournalist and morphed into a documentary filmmaker after taking a 25-year detour through getting a Ph.D. (rhetoric) and teaching journalism, media ethics, and documentary film in a media department.
I’m not prepared to start discussing it here. Instead, I’m going to point you to this developing series of posts — the kind that eventually constitute a blog essay — about visual style from my Frame by Frame blog about visual nonfiction storytelling. In order of publishing:
- What is Lyrical Style? | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
- Visual Style Conveyed in Words — Maybe | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
- Where I Differ With the Dogma | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
- From Coverage to a Visual Style | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
- How Does Malick Look | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
- Rejecting Digital Perfection | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
- What I see through a Viewfinder | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
This series also doesn’t actually get at something called visual rhetoric. To do that would require my discussion to employ the language of rhetoric and be focused on persuasive intention. That statement is idiosyncratic, by the way, and does not suggest that’s the best or only way to get at the rhetoric of visual storytelling.
I may go this direction in future posts on this topic at Frame by Frame.
