From the body to the ever-present lens, the world is increasingly preoccupied with the visual. What exactly is 'the visual' and how can we interpret the multitude of images that bombard us every day? Reading the Visual takes as its starting point a tacit familiarity with the visual, and shows how we see even ordinary objects through the frameworks and filters of culture and personal experience. It explains how to analyse the mechanisms, conventions, contexts and uses of the visual in western cultures to make sense of visual objects of all kinds.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Reading the visual2. Visual technologies3. Communication and the visual4. Visual narratives5. Visual art, visual culture6. Normalising vision7. Selling the visual8. The media as spectacleGlossaryReferencesIndex