Image Source: http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/3250-23-tm.jpg?w=350&h=256
During his lecture in the Design 001 class, Brian Fies talked about the relationship between word and image in his graphic novel, Mom’s Cancer. One of the images that he used as an example of his use of words and imagery was the image of his mother sitting with a panel bisecting the image between her head and her body. He explains that he had multiple reasons for bisecting the image in such a way, the first was because the panel looked like a window, symbolizing that the reader is looking in on her. The second reason was that it symbolized her medical condition; she had both a brain tumor and a lung tumor. The words for this image are bisected in a similar way as the image. In the upper panel, the words all describe her psychological condition, such as depression, while the bottom panel describes her medical condition, the pain she is experiencing and her physical reactions to the medications. In this way the words and the images work together to show the reader what she is going through. The words tell us this, but the image illustrates this for the reader, and together they create a powerful image that shows the reader the struggle that his mother is going through, both physically and mentally.
