Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: IMAGES, POWER, AND POLITICS
Representation
The Myth of Photographic Truth
Images and Ideology
How We Negotiate the Meaning of Images
The Value of Images
Image Icons
 
CHAPTER 2: VIEWERS MAKE MEANING
Producers' Intended Meanings
Aesthetics and Taste
Collecting, Display, and Institutional Critique
Reading Images as Ideological Subjects
Encoding and Decoding
Reception and the Audience
Appropriation and Cultural Production
Re-appropriation and Counter-Bricolage
 
CHAPTER 3: MODERNITY: SPECTATORSHIP, POWER, AND KNOWLEDGE
The Subject in Modernity
Spectatorship
Discourse and Power
The Gaze and the Other
The Gaze in Psychoanalysis
Gender and the Gaze
Changing Concepts of the Gaze
 
CHAPTER 4: REALISM AND PERSPECTIVE: FROM RENAISSANCE PAINTING TO DIGITAL MEDIA
Visual Codes and Historical Meaning
Questions of Realism
The History of Perspective
Perspective and the Body
The Camera Obscura
Challenges to Perspective
Perspective in Digital Media
 
CHAPTER 5: VISUAL TECHNOLOGIES, IMAGE REPRODUCTION, AND THE COPY
Visual Technologies
Motion and Sequence
Image Reproduction: The Copy
Walter Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction
The Politics of Reproducibility
Copies, Ownership, and Copyright
Reproduction and the Digital Image
 
CHAPTER 6: MEDIA IN EVERYDAY LIFE
The Masses and Mass Media
Media Forms
Broadcast, Narrowcast, and Webcast Media
The History of Mass Media Critiques
Media and Democratic Potential
Media and the Public Sphere
National and Global Media Events
Contemporary Media and Image Flows
 
CHAPTER 7: ADVERTISING, CONSUMER CULTURES, AND DESIRE
Consumer Societies
Envy, Desire, and Belonging
Commodity Culture and Commodity Fetishism
Brands and Their Meanings
The Marketing of Coolness
Anti-ads and Culture Jamming
 
CHAPTER 8: POSTMODERNISM, INDIE MEDIA, AND POPULAR CULTURE
Postmodernism and its Visual Cultures
Addressing the Postmodern Subject
Reflexivity and Postmodern Identity
Pastiche, Parody, and the Remake
Indie Media and Postmodern Approaches to the Market
Postmodern Space, Geography, and the Built Environment
 
CHAPTER 9: SCIENTIFIC LOOKING, LOOKING AT SCIENCE
The Theater of Science
Images as Evidence: Cataloguing the Body
Imaging the Body's Interior: Biomedical Personhood
Vision and Truth
Imaging Genetics
The Digital Body
Visualizing Pharmaceuticals
 
CHAPTER 10: THE GLOBAL FLOW OF VISUAL CULTURE
The Global Subject and the Global Gaze
Cultural Imperialism
Global Branding
Concepts of Globalization
Visuality and Global Media Flow
Indigenous and Diasporic Media
Borders and Franchises: Art and the Global
 
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Illustration
 

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 at San Diego.

Reviews

"This is that rarest of textbooks" - clear enough for undergraduates and challenging enough to use with graduate students. Simply the best introduction we have to the most important issues in thinking about the visual from an interdisciplinary perspective.
"This textbook is a comprehensive survey of theoretical, historical, social, and legal issues in visual culture. Well written and well argued, this textbook is suited for an introductory or a more advanced undergraduate course in visual culture or communication. . . . I've used Practices of Looking before and my students loved it." - Marina Levina, University of California, Berkeley
"Practices of Looking makes the subject matter and critical apparatus of visual culture studies accessible and clear. As a text, it communicates the complex ideas that animate the field without falling into jargon and murky writing. This is a book that respects the intelligence of its audience, which ranges from undergraduates just discovering visual culture to graduate students refining their own approaches to the visual universe." - Bernard Herman, University of Delaware