For my next assignment for my CTW, I have to create an effective multimodal piece that helps to further illustrate the point that I am trying to make in my research paper. So, I decided that I would do a picture in the form of those striking anti-abuse advertisements. So, I took to the internet to find two that really spoke to me, and whose emotion I would try to invoke.
The first one I found was…
This is a really powerful picture because you see here a beautiful woman posing in a pretty dress with bruises all over her body. The caption of this photo also refers to this dress, which became a phenomenon on social media because although some people saw it as gold and white, other people saw the dress as black and blue. Therefore, not only is this image striking, but the caption and premise is making it extremely relevant to audiences right now. It also gives the alarming statistic that 1 in 6 women are abused, which along with the picture of this beaten woman, bring about very intense emotions.
The second picture that I found was…
This ad was also very striking because while it is seemingly simple, there is a lot of thought behind it. From an adult’s perspective it is just a picture of a boy’s face with the caption, “Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child”.
The adult’s perspective
From the child’s perspective however (because they are much shorter than adults), the image looks much different…
In this image, the same child has a bruised face and a bloody lip, and although the caption stays the same on top, there appears another caption that only the children can see. It says, “If someone hurts you, call us and we can help you” and then provides a telephone number to call. This was an ingenious strategy, and got a lot of the global media’s attention (as this is an advertisement from Spain).
I am inspired by these two different sets of images, and they bring a very important point across to their audience in an intense and interesting way. Hopefully, I will be able to do the same with my project.
Image:
Image 1: http://d3819ii77zvwic.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/dress-salvation-army-01c-2015.jpg
Image 2: http://images.lamusica.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2013/05/fundacionanar.jpg
Image 3: http://intentblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Visual-ANAR-SOLO-NI„OS-693×1024.jpg
Image 4: http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/anti-abuse-ad_4-620×337.jpg