Nicholas Mirzoeff: An Introduction to Visual Culture (1999)

“The emerging field of visual culture poses rough terrain for beginners with its nuanced distinctions and reliance on postmodern theory. Not untilAn Introduction to Visual Culturehas any book attempted to present a comprehensive and accessible approach to this exciting new subject. Nicholas Mirzoeff begins by defining what visual culture is, and explores how and why visual media–fine art, cinema, the Internet, advertising, performance, photography, television–have become so central to contemporary everyday life. He argues that the visual is replacing the linguistic as our primary means of communicating with each other and of understanding our postmodern world, demonstrating this through powerful examples, from Diana’s funeral to the Latina singer Selena, and from the X-Files to Independence Day. Mirzoeff then examines the importance of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the body in visual culture. These various forms of social discourse provide essential tools for readingimages and thus define the study of visual culture as an inherently political project. Mirzoeff tackles the difficult subject of the gaze and the “other” and offers the reader a clear synthesis of these concepts. Lively and provocative,An Introduction to Visual Cultureoffers an accessible entry to this new way of understanding images.”

Keywords: Art and society, Visual communication, Visual perception, Mass media, Communication and culture, Postmodernism, Visual sociology, Popular culture, Media

Publisher Routledge, 1999
ISBN 0415158761, 9780415158763
274 pages

Publisher

EPUB (updated on 2012-7-18)