Stuart Hall - Reception Theory -FALLING-

Reception Theory

I first heard about him during my media studies lesson in which we spoke about his reception theory and the way it works. "Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory that emphasizes each particular reader's reception or interpretation in making meaning from a literary text. Reception theory is generally referred to as audience reception in the analysis of communications models."(1)

This idea came to me during a media class in which we explore reception theory. I began thinking this could be suitable for other topic such as photography and looked closely into how we perceive photography. We use the same theory as suggested by Stuart Hall. We explore images and look at them in a way that is personal, if we believe the image is good and has a interesting technique, story or idea it is said we take a preferred reading of this image. We can also have a negotiated and a oppositional reading to the image.

This made me think about the way my project is panning out and what I am looking at. I am taking lots of research about narrative photography which is allowing me to use my camera to tell stories. I believe similar to the English idiom "every image can speak a thousand words. This quote, although cheesy, allow the audience to interpret the images however they want and allows them to take there ideas further.
This is something I will look at further to explore some more narratives and stories.

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