You could hardly get a more powerful visual metaphor.
Times, Sunday Times
As a visual metaphor for their music, it was perfect: monochrome, gloomy and severe.
Times, Sunday Times
The looming menace of the power plant works brilliantly as a visual metaphor for the collision of lives on screen.
Times, Sunday Times
Secondly, the idea of searching for the right image seems, well, so right in a literary context; a visual metaphor means something.
The Times Literary Supplement
A decorative installation of punch bags unwittingly provides a visual metaphor for 21st-century masculinity.
Times, Sunday Times