Interpretive Visual Analysis — Reading Images through an Interpretivist Lens

Interpretive visual analysis is a qualitative approach that applies an interpretivist epistemological stance to the systematic examination of visual materials — photographs, film, artwork, diagrams, and other images. Rather than coding surface features, it treats images as socially situated texts whose meanings are constructed through cultural context, viewer positionality, and the conditions of production and circulation. The approach draws on hermeneutics, semiotics, and critical social theory to surface layered meanings that visual data carry.