Image Analysis: Time VT Massacre Cover

In regards to the Virginia Tech Massacre I'll just say: May all the victims both still with us and no more, their families and their friends, and everyone with compassion find peace and happiness. Live life in celebration of those who lost that gift.

And now the Image and Nerdy Analysis:

This image is one which I find to be quite powerful. When I first looked at this magazine cover, I had a very immediate and seemingly personal reaction even though neither I nor anyone else I know was directly involved with the Virginia Tech massacre. When I looked at the image I felt a connection, I felt immediately the sense of collective loss from the tragedy and the celebration of the lives lived and the survivors who live on. But to truly analyze the image critically, and to take apart the code which I initially ignored is to look into the true power and meaning behind images.

In looking at the image, while ignoring the text, the viewer is presented with twenty-five smaller blocks, twenty-four of which contain cropped images of various individual’s faces. The denotation of the image is twenty-four essentially anonymous faces; most of which are smiling, and none indicating sadness or grief. Taken exclusively for its denotative meaning, the image (out of context and without the text) would appear to be an overt celebration of happiness, a grid collage of someone’s friends, or even a yearbook (although reading it as such is trying to place it into a context). When removed from the cultural framework, and thus the connoted meaning of the image, the picture seems to only denote happiness in a not-very-striking way. And yet while a person who sees the image isn’t presented with an overtly sad or indicatively mourning picture, they still are overcome with a sense of loss and grief tied in with a celebration of these twenty-four slain people’s lives.

When looking at the picture (still without necessarily even considering the text), the image is read with its connotatively poignant message which strikes to the heart of most people who encounter it. Putting this image within the greater cultural context, a consumer of that picture generally knows and recognizes that it an overt expression of grief and feels the sadness and the profound sense of loss in relation to the Virginia Tech Massacre. The connotation reaches so far beyond the limits of what the image actual denotes (twenty-four anonymous mostly smiling faces), and is what the viewer emotionally responds to.

In this way, the image is read as a very powerful message and is generally seemingly read without a code. When looked at critically, however, one can observe the social environment’s encoding on the image in the mind of the individual. The image message was produced for the audience of the world who understands it and can place the picture into the surrounding social framework.

While most people viewing this image (myself included) wouldn’t be immediately or consciously aware of the disconnect between the denotative and the connotative meaning, the code of the message is bound up in the cultural context. The image denoted and its connoted meaning are very different, but individuals viewing the image apply the cultural context code to make sense of it and read the connoted sadness and grief, the powerful immortalization, and celebration for the victims’ lives, even if they are not directly related to the massacre.