rom a philosophical perspective, several important visual literacy-related aspects have been highlighted. For example, the changing of perception and interpretation in mass media (Benjamin, 1936), the way images become a ‘spectacle’ and lead to alienation in society (Debord, 1967), the role of semiotics and cultural myths in relation to images (Barthes, 1957), how context shapes perception and interpretation (Berger, 1972), the cultural and ethical implications of taking a photograph (Sonntag, 1977), the becoming ‘hyperreal’ of images or more real than reality itself to its consumers (Baudrillard, 1981), and, finally, a dynamic of power in visual representation that shapes cultural and political discourse (Mitchell, 2006). All these issues involve some form of learning and would benefit especially from a kind of learning that helps to ‘see’ these aspects. The critical theorist Douglas Kellner (1988) writes that “it is precisely the images which are the vehicles of the subject positions and that therefore critical literacy in a postmodern image culture requires learning how to read images critically and to unpack the relations between images, texts, social trends, and products in commercial culture” (p. 43).

Unfortunately, as Schönborn and Anderson (2006, 2010) argue, only a limited amount of pedagogical interventions have been made. A lack of such initiatives also means lacking the potential for social change, and based on the available literature on visual literacy, such interventions are critically important. As the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks said: “Our perception is an active, constructive process that depends on our expectations, our memories, and our ability to reason.” Such ability requires training the visual ‘muscle’ because, as the Nobel laureate Francis Crick (1994) put it, whether you see something rather than nothing depends on your primary visual cortex.

In sum, visual literacy and social advocacy join hands in photography when it critically examines social issues, intersectional perspectives, public perception of truth and ‘fake news,’ visual activism, persuasion, ethical considerations, and educational initiatives. To realize such a critical examination requires rigorous training. To put it in the poetic words of curator Mark Sealy (2022), who compares photography with the improvisational and liberatory qualities of jazz, “we can work towards a more spontaneous and receptive way of thinking that opens up space for sensing and feeling the work that a photograph generates across different individual, temporal and cultural experiences” (p. 2).