Challenges of hermeneutic image interpretation: Visual Segment Analysis as a way to explore visual meaning

In present societies we wee a growing relevance of images in almost all social areas, such as everyday life communication in social media, in popular culture, in political communication, science and advertisement - as just to name a few. In order to include images in sociological analysis of various phenomena, concepts for understanding the specific ways of how meaning is created by images are needes as well as methodological approaches for sytematically interpret and analyse pictorial expression.
In my paper, I first would like to address general challenges connected to image analysis and give an insight into a recently developed approach to visual analysis that is rooted in the Sociology of Knowledge and Hermeneutics, which I call Visual Segment Analysis. It aims at further developing those strans of Interpretive Sociology, which initially were mainly based in linguistic theories and methods of interpreting images and texts. I will elaborate on the methodological underpinnings and procedures of analyses which I will also concretely show using the example of the analysis of a photo by Helmut Newton.