Journalism 300 – Visual Communication

What is Reno style? Suppose your editor wants a photo essay on Reno Style for next week. Take a photograph (it needs to be your own photo) that captures the essence of Reno style or culture. What is visually distinctive about Reno culture?

You may select a subculture or a counterculture that exists in Reno as the focus this assignment.  In your blog, post the photo and discuss its specific qualities using the 6 points from the Lester textbook. Conclude your post by discussing the relationship between your photograph and the meaning of Reno style.

Lecture notes:

Culture and visual communications

Raymond Williams: Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact. Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind.

A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested.

Thus, ‘culture’ is taken from that privileged space of artistic production and specialist knowledge “high culture”, into the lived experience of the everyday”

A subculture is a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture.

A counterculture, is a particular subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture,

Notes and references

Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_rock

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goth_subculture

http://www.fashionmusictrends.com/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_subcultures

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youth_subcultures