Writing a visual essay requires you to detach yourself from how you have been taught to view images your whole life. Rather than passively observing and judging, you must challenge yourself to get into the visual. Repeated and lengthy viewings of visual artifacts are one step. Once you start writing, though, the goal is to not recreate the exact image that you saw, but instead to reimagine it-to view it anew. Professor Cognard-Black discusses an example essay by Barbara Kingsolver in which images enhance her writing, adding shape and color to her words.