Looking at Literacy in a New Light

The Hamilton article was a very interesting piece overall. After I read the article I scrolled through my camera roll to find out what pictures I had taken that involved literature. I tried to mentally categorize them and I discovered most of my pictures fall under the category “Interactions between people and written texts.” Hamilton states “They include images where time-bounded interaction between people and text or other literacy-related artefacts is taking place.” (28)  After reading each of Hamilton’s categories and trying to place my own images I decided that even though Hamilton sets up specific rules so each image can fall directly under one category that I could argue that some of my images fall under two or three categories. In Hamilton’s conclusion she states “Looking for visual traces of literacy practice in newspaper photographs demonstrates without a doubt that literacy is part of a social practice.” (32) She goes on to say “We need a form of description that acknowledges that people can participate in literacy practices in a range of ways.” (32) I chose more than one image to show people are participating in literacy in a range of ways. The images I chose have people, text, or they are ads. They can fall under one category or two.  Earlier last week we had a discussion based on “Who is a reader, what makes a reader, what do you have to read to be a reader?”  We are all readers. We are constantly scrolling pictures, social media sites, and articles daily. Literacy images are culturally significant because it happens on a second to second basis in our society.  Take in to account apps like Chive, Snapchat, Instagram, ect.  We snap images, and add captions.  Some people don’t copy notes from the board they snap a picture. All of these can fit in a category in Hamilton’s article. Literacy in images happens more in our age than it has ever before. Nowadays a picture say way more than a thousand words.