Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture / Edition 3

by Marita Sturken

Overview

This comprehensive and engaging introduction to visual culture explores the ways we use and understand images. It looks at painting, photography, film, television, and new media across the realms of art, advertising, news, science, and law. Authors Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright present the diverse range of approaches to visual analysis that have emerged in the last few decades, and lead the reader through the key theories of visual culture in an accessible and highly readable approach.

Including over 180 images, this truly interdisciplinary and beautifully designed book aims to be a comprehensive introduction for anyone interested in images, and the key text for courses across a range of disciplines including media and film studies, art history, photography, and communication.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900190265716
Publication date:	07/17/2017
Pages:	504
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Marita Sturken is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.

Lisa Cartwright is Professor of Communication and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
1	Practices of Looking: Images, Power, and Politics	10
	Representation	12
	The myth of photographic truth	16
	Images and ideology	21
	How we negotiate the meaning of images	25
	The value of images	31
	Image icons	36
	Notes	42
	Further Reading	43
2	Viewers Make Meaning	45
	Producers' intended meanings	45
	Aesthetics and taste	48
	Reading images as ideological subjects	50
	Encoding and decoding	56
	Appropriation and oppositional readings	58
	Re-appropriations and counter-bricolage	68
	Notes	70
	Further Reading	70
3	Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge	72
	Psychoanalysis and the image spectator	72
	The gaze	76
	Changing concepts of the gaze	82
	Discourse, the gaze, and the other	93
	Power/knowledge and panopticism	96
	The gaze and the exotic	100
	Notes	107
	Further Reading	107
4	Reproduction and Visual Technologies	109
	Realism and the history of perspective	111
	Realism and visual technologies	115
	The reproduction of images	121
	Reproduced images as politics	130
	Visual technologies and phenomenology	134
	The digital image	138
	Virtual space and interactive images	144
	Notes	149
	Further Reading	149
5	The Mass Media and the Public Sphere	151
	Critiques of the mass media	161
	The mass media and democratic potential	168
	Television and the question of sponsorship	172
	Media and the public sphere	177
	New media cultures	183
	Notes	186
	Further Reading	187
6	Consumer Culture and the Manufacturing of Desire	189
	Consumer society	191
	Commodity culture and commodity fetishism	198
	Addressing the consumer	203
	Images and text	209
	Envy, desire, and glamour	212
	Belonging and difference	218
	Bricolage and counter-bricolage	222
	The brand	227
	Anti-ad practices	231
	Notes	235
	Further Reading	235
7	Postmodernism and Popular Culture	237
	Modernism	240
	Postmodernism	251
	Reflexivity	254
	The copy, pastiche, and institutional critique	259
	Popular culture: parody and reflexivity	264
	Addressing the postmodern consumer	270
	Notes	277
	Further Reading	277
8	Scientific Looking, Looking at Science	279
	Images as evidence	280
	Scientific looking	286
	Images in biomedicine: sonograms and fetal personhood	291
	Scientific images as advocacy and politics	294
	Vision and truth	298
	Genetics and the digital body	300
	Popular science	308
	Notes	313
	Further Reading	313
9	The Global Flow of Visual Culture	315
	Television flow: from the local to the global	318
	The critique of cultural imperialism	322
	Markets of the Third World	324
	Alternative circulations: hybrid and diasporic images	327
	The Internet: global village or multinational corporate marketplace?	333
	The World Wide Web as private and public sphere	338
	The challenge of the Internet to privacy, censorship, and free speech	342
	The place of the visual in the new millennium	344
	Notes	345
	Further Reading	346
	Glossary	349
	Picture Credits	371
	Index	375

Editorial Reviews

"Practices of Looking, Third Edition, is a great and valuable textbook for teaching a broad range of critical and theoretical approaches in modern and contemporary visual practices."—Whitney Huber, Columbia College Chicago

"The greatest strength of Practices of Looking, Third Edition, is its relentless drive to instill critical awareness in students. This book contributes greatly to promoting the type of visual literacy that is needed in society both now and in the foreseeable future."—William H. Lawson, California State University, East Bay

"This is that rarest of textbooks—clear enough for undergraduates and challenging enough to use with graduate students. It is simply the best introduction to the most important issues in thinking about the visual from an interdisciplinary perspective."—Michael Coventry, Georgetown University

From the Publisher