This text looks at what is meant by visual culture.

Culture is defined as a process or set of practices, production and exchange of meanings between the members of a society orgroup. These meanings or represntations structure the way people behave. The visual is central to the cultural consruction of social life in contemporary Western societies.

The author outlines a framework for a critical visual methodology:

There are three sites at which the meanings of an image are made:
The site(s) of the production of an image
The site of the image itself
The site(s) where it is seen by various audiences

Each of these sites has three different aspects (the author calls these modalities)
- Technological
- Compositional
- Social

The author then exemplifies this framework by  interpreting a photo by Doisneau.

I think this will be a useful text for critically evaluating photos, or rather of finding meaning in them. I particularly liked the idea of considering the site where the image is seen by various audiences, as this means evaluating your own thoughts critically.

Rose, Gillian (2007) Researching visual materials: towards a critical visual methodology, chapter 1 of Visual methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. London: Sage. pp.1-27.