Resumen de Foundations of Visual Literacy: Historic Preservation and Image Management
Visual literacy refers to a number of competencies allowing people to decipher actions, objects, and symbols experienced in the environment and enjoy achievements of visual expression. These abilities are especially imperative in the field of historic preservation, which is heavily reliant upon visual documentation. However, being able to ‘read’ architecture through visual materials remains challenging. In order to understand the highest architectural achievements as well as simple vernacular structures, those who manage images within cultural heritage institutions should be visually literate. Unfortunately, the training archivists, librarians, and other information professionals receive triumphs text over images, and often those charged with image management are impaired by visual analphabetism. Images conveying built environments or cultural landscapes should not be viewed as decontextualised items, valued only for their aesthetic qualities. Additionally, the ambiguous connotations of images often lead to them being interpreted solely by their subject content. Instead, meaning is revealed by uncovering the context of the images. Information professionals should take into account the historical, aesthetic, and cultural frames of reference, intended functions, relationships and meanings related to conventions at the time and place of construction, and the interests of the image creators. In regards to architectural preservation, the images, as a visual narrative, should impart knowledge about site context, situating projects within their natural or urban landscapes, as well as demonstrating the scope of intervention, including before, during, and after comparisons. This chapter explores visual literacy in the historic preservation field through a postmodernist lens. This point of view welcomes a wide range of contextual information as the basis of understanding images and their multiple meanings to advance the universal patrimony embodied in the world’s great monuments.
