It has been well established among scholars in the history of the field that image is just as powerful a text technology as actual text. Some images can be classified as visual rhetoric, which places emphasis on these images as cultural representation and stimulation, rather than just works of art. Susan Sontag, in her essay "In Plato's Cave", explains that photographs are artifacts of the world around us, past and present. Because a photograph captures something from eternity, it can retain information in a way that reality itself cannot.
An example of an image being used as cultural representation can be found below, in this famous photograph from the Vietnam war:
This photograph uses no actual text, but contains a lot in its essence. This photograph, from the Vietnam War, was taken by a photojournalist. It symbolized for America everything that was wrong with our involvement in the Vietnam war; General Loan, of South Vietnam, is shooting what looks to be a defenseless young boy in the head. This reminded America that South Vietnam too was capable of brutal violence, and that they were not defenseless to Northern Vietnam. And if South Vietnam wasn't defenseless, why were hundreds of thousands of American soldiers dying to protect them?
Roland Barthes explains how image can be a text, and how image and text can work together, through advertisement. He explains that there are three parts of an advertisement:
1. Linguistic message-- actual text
2. Coded Iconic Message--still-life aethestics of the image
3. Noncoded Iconic Message-- what the image actually is
He also explains that advertising images are signifying complexes, and that viewers should pay attention to the exact replicas of reality that photography can capture.
1. Linguistic Message: AXE dual
2. Codic iconic Message: Smooth, rippling effect, sturdy, big
3. Noncoded Iconic Message: cologne bottle falling in water
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