Visual Representation Of "Death" In Western News Photography

In addition to language and text,vision has become the third way(even the dominant way)of meaningful communication.We used to convey messages through the image,extracting emotions from looks.Gradually,the popularity of conventional communication model which comprises of linguistic symbols has declined.Instead,visual symbols are of more significance than ever.The era of visual culture,the third era in the history of human society after the writing era and the printing era,has become an irreversible trend.Photography,the beginning of the era of visual culture,plays an important role in the field of visual study.Meanwhile,photography is also important in recording news.On the flip side,the "death",as a highly concerned and controversial issue,is an indispensable part in the news reporting field.Therefore,the news photography which represents death issues can be a valuable object for the visual culture study.From the perspective of visual culture,the paper chooses the award-winning pictures to explore questions about visual representation of "Death".The selected photography examples are from the Pulitzer Prize and the World Photography Award between 1986 and 2016.Specifically,the study conducted the Empirical Statistical Analysis,the Semiotic Analysis and the Discourse Theory and explains representing death,including the variances of death causes and race.In addition,with the combination of the Content Analysis and the Gestalt Psychology Theory,the study summarizes the technique of death representation in western news photography.Moreover,it analyzes the audience’s perceptual concentrations,the power that largely influences viewers’ perceptions via the photographer’s stereotypes and values.Finally,the paper deconstructs visual hegemony and ideology in the visual representation of"Death".