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Visual Literacy: Internet Resources

A guide with information about what visual literacy is, and questions to ask yourself when viewing images

Visual Literacy Guides

Visual Rhetoric: Analyzing Visual Documents - From Purdue OWL, this site guides you through the process of looking at visual media and reading their meaning.

A Guide to Slow Looking - From the Tate, this article will guide you through the process of slow looking - taking the time to observe an artwork in detail.

Citing Visual Works in MLA Style

Image citations should include the following: Artist last name, first name. Title. Date. Location. Database/source, URL (if applicable).

For help citing images in your work, see MLA Works Cited: Other Common Sources from Purdue OWL.

Example:

Thomas, Hank Willis. From Cain't See in the Mornin’ til Cain’t See at Night. 2011. Pamela Joyner and Fred Giuffrida Collection. Luna
https://luna.collegeforcreativestudies.edu/luna/servlet/s/nzx22y.

Discovering Images

Google Images - This facet of Google allows users to search by image, either by finding one online or uploading one (click on the camera to upload an image).

TinEye Reverse Image Search - Similar to Google Image Search, TinEye allows users to search by image.

9 Tools for Image Analysis - From Arizona State University's News Co/Lab, this site compiles a list of websites that provide tools for both basic and advanced image and video analysis.

Tracking the Source of Viral Photos - This chapter in the book Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers walks through how to research viral images and figure out where they came from.

Using Google Reverse Image Search - From the same book as above, this in-depth discussion guides readers through the process of finding out if an image represents reality, including questions to ask and steps to take to investigate.

College for Creative Studies website