Progressively structure your analysis:
Description Contextualisation Interpretation
Description (denotation)
This stage asks for a clear, concise description of the image you are analysing (what does it denote?). You should therefore answer the following questions in your analysis:
Subject : What is in the image, what is the photograph/drawing/painting/advert of? Describe in objective detail
Form: How is it composed, arranged, and constructed visually, i.e. what makes up its formal elements? angle, point of view, sharp or out of focus ...
Medium: technical information – oil, watercolour, charcoal or photograph (size/ type of film, camera, technology, cropped or uncropped)
Style: What is the stylistic form of this image? Does it conform to a stylistic genre - Expressionism, Cubism, documentary, reportage...? or a historic era – the Renaissance, Modernism? What subjects does the artist or photographer usually work with? How does this relate to the photograph's or art work's formal elements?
Contextualisation
For this stage you should compare and contrast your chosen image to other work by the same artist, to other work by other artists in the same and different media. How is it the same? How is it different?
If you are analysing an advertisement you might want to consider another advert for the same type of product, or how the product has been advertised in the past.
Interpretation (connotation)
What does this image mean?
What in your view (own words / ideas) is the image expressing and how? How do you “read” the image? What is the mood? Tone? Emotion? Sense of place? Experience? Historicity? ...
For future assignments you should evaluate the images you use in any Cultural & Historical Studies essay and should consider the following points:
From what perspective are you viewing this image? Formal? Stylistic? Feminist? Biographical? Technical? Psychoanalytical? ...
Why is this...