Exploring Visual Culture

An introduction to the study of visual culture, this book offers a view of 'visual culture' that includes not only images, but also other visual media and forms of expression, from architecture to fashion, design and the human body. The book is organised around three broad themes, exploring key ideas and debates that have occurred during the last 20 or so years: *the meanings of the term 'visual culture' and of the various practices that form its basis*conceptual approaches to the contemporary analysis of visual culture*the cultural, social and historical contexts informing its production, distribution and consumption.Drawing on a wide range of examples from the last 100 years, the book adopts a cross-disciplinary perspective; it also explores, however, the limits of visual culture as an interdisciplinary field of study, engaging in current debates about the uses and value of the study of visual culture. It will therefore be of value both for readers new to the subject and also for those seeking fresh interventions into contemporary discussions within the field.Features*Accessibly written by a team of experts in the field*Illustrated throughout*Includes chapters on a wide range of visual forms, including architecture and urban design, film, crafts, fashion, design, fine art and the media.

An introduction to the study of visual culture, this book offers a view of 'visual culture' that includes not only images, but also other visual media and forms of expression, from architecture to fashion, design and the human body.

The nineteenth century is central to contemporary discussions of visual culture. This reader brings together key writings on the period, exploring such topics as photographs, exhibitions and advertising.

“We can no longer see, much less teach, transhistorical truths, timeless works of art, and unchanging critical criteria without a highly developed sense of irony about the grand narratives of the past,” declare the editors, who also coedited Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation (1990). The field of art history is not unique in finding itself challenged and enlarged by cultural debates over issues of class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and gender. Visual Culture assembles some of the foremost scholars of cultural studies and art history to explore new critical approaches to a history of representation seen as something different from a history of art. CONTRIBUTORS: Andres Ross, Michael Ann Holly, Mieke Bal, David Summers, Constance Penley, Kaja Silverman, Ernst Van Alphen, Norman Bryson, Wolfgang Kemp, Whitney Davis, Thomas Crow, Keith Moxey, John Tagg, Lisa Tickner. Ebook Edition Note: Ebook edition note: all illustrations have been redacted.

This is a book about how to read visual images: from fine art to photography, film, television and new media. It explores how meaning is communicated by the wide variety of texts that inhabit our increasingly visual world. But, rather than simply providing set meanings to individual images, Visual Culture teaches readers how to interpret visual texts with their own eyes. While the first part of the book takes readers through differing theoretical approaches to visual analysis, the second part shifts to a medium-based analysis, connected by an underlying theme about the complex relationship between visual culture and reality. Howells and Negreiros draw together seemingly diverse methodologies, while ultimately arguing for a polysemic approach to visual analysis. The third edition of this popular book contains over fifty illustrations, for the first time in colour. Included in the revised text is a new section on images of power, fear and seduction, a new segment on video games, as well as fresh material on taste and judgement. This timely edition also offers a glossary and suggestions for further reading. Written in a clear, lively and engaging style, Visual Culture continues to be an ideal introduction for students taking courses in visual culture and communications in a range of disciplines, including media and cultural studies, sociology, and art and design.

"Anthology [of] key texts that document the history of art over the past one thousand years"--P. [4] of cover.

Popular and Visual Culture: Design, Circulation and Consumption is a transnational project that fosters a dialogue with multiple origins, both in geographical and academic terms. From the onset, this book questions the concepts of visual and popular culture, terms which are currently applied both to describe scientific fields, as operative concepts in theoretical discourse, and to characterize specific cultural contexts. The book’s analysis and categorization of visual and popular culture pursues discourses and practices which mark different historical eras and shape social orders. Because popular iconic and written productions are the outcome of a network of political, economic, ideological and social circumstances that are often hardly detectable and too taken for granted to be critically recognized, even by those who draw, paint or write (and live) under their influence. That is why visual figurations of popular culture should be studied as the support of a deeply motivated symbolic discourse on the values shared by a community. This book deals, in a way or another, with how popular and visual artefacts and sceneries are socially built, preserved and/or contested. The volume brings together, not only different disciplinary perspectives, but also diverse empirical phenomena, while approaching the wide subject of visuality and popular culture.

How to help students negotiate visual culture's potent and multilayered meanings. Engaging Visual Culture is a guidebook for teachers to help students make sense of the pervasive flow of visual information shaping their worldview and way of being. The authors offer practical strategies to help students learn to think critically about visual culture, its meanings, and its impact on their lives. Each of the nine chapters focuses on three key concepts: Expose, Explode, and Empower. By exposing students to the presence and power of visual culture, and "exploding" the passive acceptance of the visual messages all around us, students are empowered to participate actively in constructing their own meanings.