Rhetorical residue of the visual

Here, I would like to analyze a few photos from the Cornell site commemorating the Triangle Factory Fire, using the visuals as subjects for both the legitimacy and the dangers of visual rhetoric. These photographs can be accessed by clicking on this link.

The first (which is located in this gallery) depicts some of the cramped working conditions that employees in the factory were subject to prior to the fire. Let's assume for a second that a student were using this photo as part of an argument against the working conditions permitted by Blanck and Harris. This student might be arguing for tougher labor and union laws that would make space concerns like this tougher for the owners of the factory to enforce.
In my opinion, the photograph itself would serve as a fine piece of evidence of the "inhumane" working conditions at the factory. Space is clearly cramped, and the picture seems cluttered with equipment and scraps. We can see that if a major fire were to spark in this area, it might be difficult for the individuals in the photo to evacuate.
The student might be wary, however, of using this photo as a stand-alone piece of evidence. As with any piece of evidence in any primary textual argument, the photographer is free to edit and manipulate the field of view within the picture so as to "frame" a certain ideology. We have no way of knowing for certain whether or not the space that lies outside the camera frame is as cramped and claustrophobic as the area within our immediate field of vision. While the student should be encouraged to use a photographic like this as evidence, she might also be encouraged to complement it with other evidence as well, whether it be data or textual analysis.

In the second image, which is located in this gallery, we see a floor plan of the ninth floor of the factory. It is not a photograph, but it is a visual. It serves as a map, situating us geographically within the entire space of the ninth floor. This photograph might serve as a fuller piece of persuasion, a sort of complement to the previous image. Instead of being restricted by the camera's field of vision, as we were in the first photograph, we are given a more panoramic view of the floor. We see how close together the tables are situated, and how their length would make it difficult for workers to file out to the aisles and evacuate in the case of an emergency. We see how the exists are not easily accessible for those workers who might be in the middle of the room. This visual would serve as a fine justification of a student's theoretical claim that conditions within the factory were too cramped.

People who claim that the working conditions at the Triangle Factory were inhumane and did not accommodate evacuation procedures assert as part of their argument that the stairwells, in addition to being difficult to access, were much too narrow in order to facilitate mass evacuations. For those who make this claim, the fourth photograph in this gallery would be an especially appropriate piece of evidence--though it would likely require some explanatory text accompanying it. Here, we see that the staircase is quite narrow and winding in awkward places. The doorway is probably too narrow to accommodate a large number of people attempting to get out in the case of a fire. As I mentioned, though, the rhetor/student would probably want to provide some text in a caption explaining the context of the photograph. It would probably not be sufficient enough simply to place this picture in a visual essay without giving the contextualizing explanation that I just provided.

I bring up a couple of the photographs in this gallery, which depict unidentified bodies lined up in caskets for people to view, for a couple of reasons. First, they carry with them a powerful emotional resonance. The mere image of bodies lined up in a row, lying in a dank warehouse in the aftermath as people attempt to identify the remains has a powerful pathos element to it. A photograph like one of these might serve as a powerful contextualizing piece setting up the rest of a student's argument. The reader/viewer would immediately be immersed into the gripping context of the subject matter. However (and this is the second reason that I chose to include this photograph), I believe that a photograph like this reveals some of the danger of the misapplication of principles of visual rhetoric. If one were to use this photograph or one strikingly similar to it as her main piece of evidence to prove that the working conditions were inhumane, she might inadvertently begin to ignore the logos stem of argument as a result. The reader/viewer might develop a profound emotional attachment to the incident at the expense of the hard data associated with the incident. A student might attempt to prove her argument solely on the basis of emotionally wrenching photographs such as these without considering other factors, and then the argument becomes pure emotion. The immediacy of the visual to the mind would become a danger then, and, as with any other traditional form of argument, inaccurate and misleading manipulation might take precedence over the unity of the logos, pathos, and ethos stems of argument. The student would want to be very careful to complement an image such as this either with written text or with some other photographs, like the ones I already addressed, so as to develop a fully unified argument.