Application of Reflective Photography Technique in Visual-Semantic Evaluation from Citizens' Point of View (Case Study: Urban Landscape of Shiraz)

Semantic contradictions between the contemporary and historical urban landscapes have led to a crisis of meaning in cities. Shiraz, one of the metropolises of Iran, unfortunately, has undergone destruction in the modern era. This research aims to extract the meaning received by the citizens and compare the visual-semantic features of the city. Given this, a combination of photography with a structured questionnaire under the title of “Reflective Photography” has been utilized, with the assistance of “Photo Content Analysis” in the Atlas Ti 8 software. The results showed that the semantic parameters/factors “Sense of Place” and “Structure-Related Qualities” have the most repetition in both historical and contemporary urban landscape contexts and could be entirely beneficial to form a new meaning or strengthen the mental image. There is no meaningful link between meanings and the visual feature of photos, nonetheless, further developments should definitely consider attention to the “Sky View” and “Greenery”.