1/27/2005
   slide 6
Images Explosion Factoids
•
•For most our history, books were one of few leisure-time activities
•Pictures used to be rare—had to be in special locations devoted to art (e.g., caves, then tombs, temples, churches, etc.)
•Photography is not even 200 years old
•1895: first public viewing of a motion picture (Lumiere Brothers, Paris) – 50 years later half the population of the US went  to a movie at least once a week
•1946—commercial  TV.
•By HS graduation more TV than hours in school (AACAP)
•Early 1980s—USA Today and other highly graphical newspapers
•1970s: public begins to see images made with computers
•1990s: images on Internet—WWW
Non-existence of image canon in part  because great quantities of accessible images are historically recent

Factoids from Visual Literacy, Lynell Burmark

P7 Rise of Image:” ..most of the world’s inhabitants are now devoting about half their leisure time to an activity that did not exist two generations ago. Most of the rest are held back only by the lack of electricity or the money to buy a set.”

“According to a Gallup poll, the number of Americans who admitted to having read no books of any kind during the past year—and this is not an easy thing to admit to a pollster—doubled from 1978 to 1990, from 8 to 16 percent.” p9