Let's Take A Long Walk, Around the Blog, After Dark

For this assignment, we were supposed to select a blog entry from one of the previous Amsterdam programs and analyze it utilizing ideas about the social construction of space as delineated in Lynch's A Walk Around the Block as well as Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space. For my selection, I chose to investigate and meander through the digital space of Demi's first blog entry (from 2006) entitled, "A Little About the Little Ol' Me." As I will discuss in this post, the main deliberate construction of space that I noticed being used by Demi was the embeddedness and specific positioning of photographs - which we can think of as 'visual text' - within the typed text. The interplay of visual and typed text in turn creates a digital space which the author found conducive for the discussion of her "Little Ol'" self.
Looking at the blog entry for the first time, I immediately noticed the juxtaposition of the first paragraph to a photo of Demi and three of her friends at a Huskies game. On a simple, but essential, level the photo serves as an enhancement to the text right next to it that discusses Demi's social and academic life as a student at the UW. Yet, there is more that is conveyed by the picture and the manner in which it is positioned within the blog post. The photo does not appear after the first paragraph. Rather than the photo appearing below the typed text, the text surrounds the picture. Since there is no text to the right of the photo, the photo isn't exactly in the center of the post, but it certainly takes up most of the space, allowing only a few words per line to appear to the left of the photo. When the text appears in such a narrow column to the right of the picture, after reading each line, one is forced to look at the picture as if it were a continuation of the words -- as if, after reading the last word of every line, the photo continues the thought of the typed text. The lines of the paragraph do become longer, but only after we reach the end of the photograph. Thus, as the typed text encircles the picture, it is as if the text becomes the picture's frame, thus seeming almost secondary to the photo. The usage and arrangement of the photo within the typed text consequently shows that the picture is telling just as much of the story - if not more - as the "traditional" text. However, as I have stated before, the picture cannot really be viewed as something that eclipses the text since it is in fact part of the text! As Jessica conveyed in our second class meeting, images should be regarded as a textual form that warrants close reading just as much as literature and writing in general. I fully agree, JB.

Oh, and by the way, if the reader has not figured it out, my title for this post is an ode to Jill Scott's "A Long Walk," a song I was listening to as I was typing this entry. If you are so inclined, you can hear the song, and watch the video, below. Incidentally, on the topic of the construction and use of social and urban space, much can be extracted and pondered over from the video's unique cinematography. Enjoy neo-soul at its finest: