The author traces the history and theory of visual culture asking how and why visual media have become so central to contemporary everyday life. He explores a wide range of visual forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, television, cinema, virtual reality, and the Internet while addressing the subjects of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, the body, and the international media event that followed the death of Princess Diana.

The diverse essays collected here constitute an exploration of the emerging interdisciplinary field of visual culture, and examine why modern and postmodern culture place such a premium on rendering experience in visual form.

This book is about the expanding realm of visual culture: in architecture, art, design, advertising, photography, film, television, video, theatre performance, computer imagery and virtual reality. It is also about Visual Culture Studies, a relatively new academic discipline, or rather range of disciplines, that scholars employ to analyse visual artefacts. Unlike many other texts on the same subject, it foregrounds the ‘visual’ and is systematic and accessible. Visual culture provides an overview of the subject that pays heed to the achievements of both traditional and new theory whilst directing the reader to a large body of literature via references and an extensive bibliography. Walker and Chaplin discuss the concepts of ‘the visual’ and of ‘culture’ as well as the field and origins of Visual Culture Studies; coping with theory; models of production and consumption; institutions; pleasure; the canon and concepts of value; visual literacy and poetics; modes of analysis; culture and commerce; and new technologies. This book is designed for those studying the history and theory of fine arts, design and the mass media.

These texts represent both the formation of visual culture, and the ways in which it has transformed, and continues to transform, our understanding and experience of the world as a visual domain.

Drawing on interviews, responses to questionnaires, and oral histories by U.S.

"The first part of the book is concerned with differing theoretical approaches to visual analysis, and includes chapters on iconology, form, art history, ideology, semiotics and hermeneutics. The second part shifts from a theoretical to a medium-based approach and comprises chapters on fine art, photography, film, television and new media. These investigate the complex relationship between reality and visual representation." -- Book Jacket.

Visual Culture Studies presents 13 engaging and detailed interviews with some of the most influential intellectuals working today on the objects, subjects, media, and environments of visual culture. Exploring historical and theoretical questions of vision, the visual, and visuality, this collection reveals the provocative insights of these thinkers, as they have contributed in exhilarating ways to disturbing the parameters of more traditional areas of study across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In so doing they have key roles in establishing visual culture studies as a significant field of inquiry. Each interview draws out the interests and commitments of the interviewee to critically interrogate the past, present, and future possibilities of visual culture studies and visual culture itself.

A fascinating exploration of the way in which animals are 'framed' - contextualized, decontextualized - in contemporary visual culture. Written in a highly engaging style, this book challenges the field, dealing with some highly controversial aspects of animal exploitation and boldly examines material that is seldom discussed within animal studies.

Each of the five volumes in the Stone Art Theory Institutes series brings together a range of scholars who are not always directly familiar with one another’s work. The outcome of each of these convergences is an extensive and “unpredictable conversation” on knotty and provocative issues about art. This fifth and final volume in the series focuses on the identity, nature, and future of visual studies, discussing critical questions about its history, objects, and methods. The contributors question the canon of literature of visual studies and the place of visual studies with relation to theories of vision, visuality, epistemology, politics, and art history, giving voice to a variety of inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives. Rather than dismissing visual studies, as its provocative title might suggest, this volume aims to engage a critical discussion of the state of visual studies today, how it might move forward, and what it might leave behind to evolve in productive ways. The contributors are Emmanuel Alloa, Nell Andrew, Linda Báez Rubí, Martin A. Berger, Hans Dam Christensen, Isabelle Decobecq, Bernhard J. Dotzler, Johanna Drucker, James Elkins, Michele Emmer, Yolaine Escande, Gustav Frank, Theodore Gracyk, Asbjørn Grønstad, Stephan Günzel, Charles W. Haxthausen, Miguel Á. Hernández-Navarro, Tom Holert, Kıvanç Kılınç, Charlotte Klonk, Tirza True Latimer, Mark Linder, Sunil Manghani, Anna Notaro, Julia Orell, Mark Reinhardt, Vanessa R. Schwartz, Bernd Stiegler, Øyvind Vågnes, Sjoukje van der Meulen, Terri Weissman, Lisa Zaher, and Marta Zarzycka.

This forward-thinking collection brings together over sixty essays that invoke images to summon, interpret, and argue with visual studies and its neighboring fields such as art history, media studies, visual anthropology, critical theory, cultural studies, and aesthetics. The product of a multi-year collaboration between graduate students from around the world, spearheaded by James Elkins, this one-of-a-kind anthology is a truly international, interdisciplinary point of entry into cutting-edge visual studies research. The book is fluid in relation to disciplines; it is frequently inventive in relation to guiding theories; it is unpredictable in its allegiance and interest in the past of the discipline--reflecting the ongoing growth of visual studies.