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When I was in Morocco this spring, I took pictures of all the usual things, like stunning geometric architecture, carefully piled spices for sale, and lines of camels walking among majestic Sahara dunes. But this image, of no great photographic value, turned out to be one of my favorites because it suggests a story.

如果你“阅读”或理解，这张照片的一个故事第一次瞥了一眼，那可能是因为你是视觉上的识字。在某些时候，您开发了分析与受试者，框架，角度，光，焦点，组成和背景相关的视觉线条的技能，以便理解图像的目的，也许是关于它所代表的地方或人的目的。您可能已经使用这项技能足够长，无需思考，但对于不太经历的人来说，这不会是真的。根据共同的核心和mnational standards, having such strategies on hand to interpret the content and style of visual media is a must for today’s students.

So how might you guide students to help them move from a passive viewing of this photo to a well-supported reading of it? One way might be to lead them throughthis exercise, available from the National Archives. Let’s work through the exercise’s steps together, using the photo featured here.

• A quick scan of the photo reveals that it’s a candid documentary type image. The caption offers the location, date, and photographer’s name.
• 观察照片的零件揭示了一个穿着传统服装蹲的男人，以采取攀登岩石脸的运动衣服的动作射击。在岩石面上或附近是涂鸦和某种电缆或线。
• In trying to make sense of the photo, students may look at the caption to see who took the photo, where it was from, and when. With a little bit of research, they would learn that I am not a native of Morocco, that the Dadès Gorges is a dramatic mountainous landscape popular among rock climbers, and that spring is a common time for climbing enthusiasts and tourists alike to visit the area.
• Based on all of this information, students can make some inferences as to why the photo was taken and what story or stories this photo is telling. To help them make this final leap, you might ask questions like the following:
  • 你在哪里猜到这张照片中的每个人来自？他们的衣服可能会告诉你什么？
  • What might their relationship be?
  • Why might the man in blue be taking a photo of the man in orange?
  • 为什么摄影师选择框架这张照片以包括登山者和拍摄他的人？给每个数字的焦点和图像中的空间给出的效果是什么？
  • What might this photo tell you about tourism and environmental protections in Morocco? What sources could you find that would deepen this knowledge?

Students should now be able to write a paragraph about this photo. And the story they suss out will likely be something similar—at least in broad strokes—to the one I experienced and intended in taking the photo, which might be fun to share at the end of the exercise. And if the paragraph a student wrote is not close, that’s fine too, as long as the student can muster visual and contextual evidence to support their interpretation.

这是我的故事：

The man in blue was a local Moroccan guide who had been hired to lead my small tour group through the Dadès Gorges. The area is quite dependent on tourists, both those that come to climb there and those passing through on their way to the sand dunes of Merzouga. One of the men in our group was an Austrian mountaineer. At one point, after we had passed several foreign climbers, the mountaineer started to scale one of the walls we were walking by. This delighted our tour guide, who grabbed the mountaineer’s camera and excitedly started taking several shots, despite the Austrian’s protests that the climbing he was doing was utterly basic and not worth photographing.

我拍摄照片的目的是记录这个摩洛哥的一个不寻常的时刻拍摄旅游者，因为它几乎始终是另一种方式，并且探讨了人们在面对外国人或地区时选择拍照的想法。整天，我们的游客一直拍摄对当地人完全普通的东西，包括食品，服装和运输方式，与我们的本国相比似乎是独一无二的。现在我们的指南正在做同样的事情—w他的照片不是在他自己的相机上的差异。虽然他是谁是他是一个相当小说的景点，但他仍然是一个愿意满足于他的雇主之一的员工，这是一个习惯于瑞士阿尔卑斯山的登山者，他认为他认为自己是一张自己的照片地面。So the photo is also meant to turn on its head the usual power relationship between the subject and creator of travel images.

有关更多的视觉扫盲资源，请参阅文化术语教学活动和广泛的照片库.