Photography

Visual literacy is a characteristic all human beings inherently possess. Yet because of our cultural and social differences, we interpret visual symbols and representations, such as drawings, pictures, and artefacts, in different ways. How and why people use visual images to represent complex ideas and processes is the focus of How People use Pictures. It is the first comprehensive review of the literature on visual literacy in over a decade, and offers new insights into this complicated issue. Written for practitioners interested in communicating with local people using pictures and visual symbols and for researchers interested in gaining a deeper appreciation of the 'language of the visual' , this book provides detailed annotations of over 100 key references, as well as an extensive list of useful institutions and resources. This book was reprinted in 1997 and contains a new forward written by Bob Linney, outlining recent developments in visual literacy

This new initiative envisions a website full of creative responses for healing and reconciliation. It is a project of Herm Weaver and John Paul Lederach. Herm is a roofer, a psychology professor, and always a singer/songwriter. John Paul is a mediator, a professor, and always a storyteller. Both work on the question of reconciliation and healing, and believe there is great potential for nurturing these processes through songs and stories. The site features the Dream the Light CD, a song and story in response to September 11, books, videos and other resources.

This title is designed for people who want to make and use pictures for development. It provides guidelines to enable non-artists to make their own visual aids such as discussion starters, picture cards, flannel boards and community maps. It includes sections on: common pictorial conventions; how to draw and use colour; how to copy and adapt pictures; how to make and use a range of people-centred visual aids; and how to plan and conduct workshops on visual communication. The book looks at ways in which visual aids have been designed and used in the past, and shows how the authoritarian approach to communication has failed to promote a more equal distribution of power among people. The author proposes a different approach to work with educational visual aids - a "people-centred" approach - which goes beyond mere participation towards fuller involvement of local people in their own development. The traditional perspective of research studies of visual literacy among non-literate people is shown to be essentially neo-colonial. In this text, by contrast, visual literacy is viewed as a skill that is easy to acquire, rather than as a handicap to overcome by outsider professionals trying to develop a top-down "pictorial language".

Photochannel is an online photographic gallery covering different deveopment and humanitarias issues, archive of images available.