The picture of education

A photo-analytical reconstruction of a homepage of the German Federal Ministry of Education

Abstract

This essay analyzes a photo on the homepage of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), asking which ideas of school education can be found in the photo and how this is expressed by the arrangement of the photo in the homepage. First, it will be explained, what different kinds of photo-analytical methods exist in the moment. They will be compared. After that, the photo is compared in its own logic, in its contextual embedding and with regard to its reception history with a hermeneutic approach. The essay ends with a conclusion reflecting the analysis and tries to find an answer to the question which ideas of the BMBF are shown in the image of (school) education and which ones are just not shown.