Chapter 6: The Meaning of
Composition
Composition and the Multimodal
Text
Kress and van Leeuwen in chapter 6, as has
been
their consistent mission throughout their book, argue for a "complex set
of relations that can exist between images and their viewers"(181). As
such, they begin this chapter with an analysis of a still photograph taken
from Bergman's film Through a Glass Darkly, and provide an analysis
of the variety of 'directive' elements found within the
photo.
After a somewhat lengthy analysis of the above
photo, the authors come
up with an element list or what they call, "three interrelated
systems:"
(1)Information value. The placement of
elements (participants
and syntagms that relate them to each other and to the viewer) endows them
with the specific informational values attached to the various 'zones' of
the image: left and right, top and bottom, centre and margin.
(2)Salience. The elements (participants and representational
and interactive syntagms) are made to attract the viewer's attention to
different degrees, as realized by such factors as placement in the
foreground or background, relative size, contrasts in tonal value (or
color), differences in sharpness, etc.
(3)Framing.The presence or absence of framing devices (realized
by elements which create dividing lines, or by actual frame lines)
disconnects or connects elements of the image, signifying that they belong
or do not belong together in some sense.
Kress and van Leeuwen, while validating the
excercise of investigating
these various elements individually, do so with the explicit intention of
analyzing their synthesis. That is, their fundamental concern lies
with "the composition of the whole, the way in which the
representational and interactive elements are made to relate to each
other, the way they are integrated into a meaninful whole."(181)(my
italics)
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