Art reading response
- How do the authors distinguish between “seeing” and “looking”?
- Define representation. Can representation be defied or subverted?
- What is the “myth of photographic truth”? Define subjective choice and how it connects with the photograph as “evidence”? How has technology impacted the “truth-value” of the photograph?
- Discuss Roland Barthes’ two levels of meaning for an image. How does Barthes use and connect the term “myth” to the image?
- Describe ideology and its connections to the image. Define propaganda. How does propaganda connect to ideology?
- How does the portrait image of O.J. Simpson figure into the discussion of Ideology and cultural power?
- What does Saussure argue in his theory of Semiotics? How has his theories been used in visual theory and analysis?
- How is value conceived of and applied to art/visual imagery? What other kinds of values adhere to images in our culture? What is meant by icons? How does this connect to value? Can icons be subverted?
Practices of Looking10
Practices of Looking
Images, Power, and Politics
1
Every day, we are in the practice of looking to make sense of the world. To see
is a process of observing and recognizing the world around us. To look is to
actively make meaning of that world. Seeing is something that we do some-
what arbitrarily as we go about our daily lives. Looking is an activity that
involves a greater sense of purpose and direction. If we ask, “did you see that?”
we imply happenstance (“did you happen to see it?”). When we say “Look at
that!” it is a command. To look is an act of choice. Through looking we nego-
tiate social relationships and meanings. Looking is a practice much like speak-
ing, writing, or signing. Looking involves learning to interpret and, like other
practices, looking involves relationships of power. To willfully look or not is to
exercise choice and influence. To be made to look, to try to get someone else
to look at you or at something you want to be noticed, or to engage in an
exchange of looks, entails a play of power. Looking can be easy or difficult, fun
or unpleasant, harmless or dangerous. There are both conscious and uncon-
scious levels of looking. We engage in practices of looking to communicate, to
influence and be influenced.
We live in cultures that are increasingly permeated by visual images with a
variety of purposes and intended effects. These images can produce in us a
wide array of emotions and responses: pleasure, desire, disgust, anger, curios-
ity, shock, or confusion. We invest the images we create and encounter on a
daily basis with significant power—for instance, the power to conjure an
absent person, the power to calm or incite to action, the power to persuade
or mystify. A single image can serve a multitude of purposes, appear in a range
of settings, and mean different things to different people. The roles played by
images are multiple, diverse, and complex. This image, of school children in
the early 1940s who see a murder scene in the street, was taken by photog-
rapher Weegee (whose real name was Arthur Fellig). Weegee was known for
his images of crimes and violence in the streets of New York, where he would
listen to a police radio in order to get to crime scenes early. In this photograph,
he calls attention both to the act of looking at the forbidden and to the capac-
ity of the still camera to capture heightened emotion. The children are looking
at the murder scene with morbid fascination, as we look with equal fascina-
tion upon them looking.
The images we encounter every day span the social realms of popular
culture, advertising, news and information exchange, commerce, criminal
justice, and art. They are produced and experienced through a variety of
media: painting, printmaking, photography, film, television/video, computer
digital imaging, and virtual reality. One could argue that all of these media—
including those that do not involve mechanical or technological means of
production—are imaging technologies. Even paintings are produced with the
“technology” of paint, brush, and canvas. We live in an increasingly image-
saturated society where paintings, photographs, and electronic images
depend on one another for their meanings. The most famous paintings
of Western art history have been photographically and electronically
Practices of Looking 11
Weegee, Their First
Murder, Before 1945
reproduced, and many of these reproductions have been touched up or
altered by means of computer graphics. For most of us, knowledge of famous
paintings is not first-hand, but through reproductions in books and on posters,
greeting cards, classroom slides, and television specials about art history. The
technology of images is thus central to our experience of visual culture.
Representation
Representation refers to the use of language and images to
create meaning about the world around us. We use words to understand,
describe, and define the world as we see it, and we also use images to do this.
This process takes place through systems of representation, such as language
and visual media, that have rules and conventions about how they are or-
ganized. A language like English has a set of rules about how to express and
interpret meaning, and so, for instance, do the systems of representation of
painting, photography, cinema, or television.
Throughout history, debates about representation have considered
whether these systems of representation reflect the world as it is, such that
they mirror it back to us as a form of mimesis or imitation, or whether in fact
we construct the world and its meaning through the systems of representa-
tion we deploy. In this social constructionist approach, we only make meaning
Practices of Looking12
of the material world through specific cultural contexts. This takes place in part
through the language systems (be they writing, speech, or images) that we
use. Hence, the material world only has meaning, and hence only can be
“seen” by us, through these systems of representation. This means that the
world is not simply reflected back to us through systems of representation,
but that we actually construct the meaning of the material world through these
systems.
Over time, images have been used to represent, make meaning of, and
convey various sentiments about nature, society, and culture as well as to rep-
resent imaginary worlds and abstract concepts. Throughout much of history,
for example, images, most of them paintings, have been used by religions to
convey religious myths, church doctrines, and historical dramas. Many images
have been produced to depict seemingly accurate renditions of the world
around us, while others have been created to express abstract concepts and
feelings such as love. Language and systems of representation do not reflect
an already existing reality so much as they organize, construct, and mediate
our understanding of reality, emotion, and imagination.
The distinction between the idea of reflection, or mimesis, and representa-
tion as a construction of the material world can often be difficult to make. The
still life, for instance, has been a favored subject of artists for many centuries.
One might surmise that the still life is simply about the desire to reflect, rather
than make meaning of, material objects. In this still life, painted in 1642 by
Dutch painter Pieter Claesz, an array of food and drink is carefully arranged on
a table, and painted with an attention to each minute detail. The objects, such
as the tablecloth, dishes, bread, carafe, and glass, are rendered with an atten-
tion to light and seem so lifelike that one imagines one could touch them. Yet,
is this image simply a reflection of this particular scene, rendered with skill by
the artist? Is it simply a mimesis of a scene, painted for the sake of demon-
strating skill? Claesz worked in the seventeenth century, when Dutch painters
were fascinated with the still life form, and painters painted many such works
with attention to creating the illusion of material objects on canvas. The Dutch
still life took the form of paintings that were straightforwardly representational
to those that were deeply symbolic. Many were not simply about a composi-
tion of food and drink, but replete with allusions and symbolism, as well as
philosophical ideas. Many works, such as this, were concerned with depicting
the transience of earthly life, through the ephemeral materiality of food. They
call forth the senses through the depiction of foods which are associated with
Practices of Looking 13
particular aromas, in which partially eaten foods evoked the experience of
eating. In this work, the fare is simple, a reference to the everyday food of the
common people, yet one can also see the potential religious allusions of
bread, wine, and fish to Christian rituals.1 Yet, even if we simply read this image
as a representation of food without any symbolism, its original meaning was
derived from its depiction of what food and drink meant in seventeenth-
century Holland. Here, the language of painting is used to create a particular
set of meanings according to a set of conventions about realistically depict-
ing the material world. We will discuss concepts of realism more in
Chapter 4.
Here, we want to note that this painting produces meanings about these
objects, rather than simply reflecting some meaning that is already within
them.
Representation is thus a process through which we construct the world
around us, even through a simple scene such as this, and make meaning from
it. We learn the rules and conventions of the systems of representation within
a given culture. Many artists have attempted to defy those conventions,
to break the rules of various systems of representation, and to push at the
Practices of Looking14
Pieter Claesz, Still Life
with Stoneware Jug,
Wine Glass, Herring, and
Bread, 1642
definitions of representation. In this painting, for example, Surrealist painter
René Magritte comments upon the process of representation. Entitled The
Treachery of Images (1928–29), the painting depicts a pipe with the line in
French, “This is not a pipe.” One could argue, on the one hand, that Magritte
is making a joke, that of course it is an image of a pipe that he has created.
However, he is also pointing to the relationship between words and things,
since this is not a pipe itself but rather the representation of a pipe; it is a paint-
ing rather than the material object itself. Philosopher Michel Foucault elabo-
rates these ideas in a short text about this painting and a drawing by Magritte
that preceded it. Not only does he address the painting’s implied commentary
about the relationship between words and things, he also considers the
complex relationship among the drawing, the painting, their words, and their
referent (the pipe). One could not pick up and smoke this pipe. So, Magritte
can be seen to be warning the viewer not to mistake the image for the real
thing. He is also marking the very act of naming, drawing our attention to the
word “pipe” itself, and its function in representing the object pipe. Both the
word “pipe” and the image of the pipe represent the material object pipe, and
in pointing this out, Magritte asks us to consider how they produce meaning
about it. Thus, when we stop and examine the process of representation, as
Practices of Looking 15
René Magritte, The
Treachery of Images,
1928–29
Magritte asks us to do, a process that we normally take for granted, we can
see the complexity of how words and images produce meaning in our world.
The myth of photographic truth
The rules and conventions of different
systems of representation vary, and we attribute different sets of cultural
meanings to each—such as paintings, photographs, and television images.
Many of the images discussed in this book were produced by cameras and
through photographic or electronic technologies. These images belong to the
various worlds of fine art, public art, advertising, popular culture, alternative
media, the news media, and science.
No matter what social role an image plays, the creation of an image through
a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selec-
tion, framing, and personalization. It is true that some types of image record-
ing seem to take place without human intervention. In surveillance videos, for
instance, no one stands behind the lens to determine what should be shot and
how to shoot it. Yet even in surveillance video, someone has programmed the
camera to record a particular part of a space and framed that space in a
particular way. In the case of many automatic video and still-photography
cameras designed for the consumer market, aesthetic choices like focus and
framing are made as if by the camera itself, yet in fact the designers of these
cameras also made decisions based on social and aesthetic norms such as
clarity and legibility. These mechanisms are invisible to the user—they are
black-boxed, relieving the photographer of various decisions. Yet, it remains
the photographer who takes and chooses the image, not the camera itself. At
the same time, despite the subjective aspects of the act of taking a picture,
the aura of machine objectivity clings to mechanical and electronic images.
All camera-generated images, be they photographic, cinematic, or electronic
(video or computer-generated), bear the cultural legacy of still photography,
which historically has been regarded as a more objective practice than, say,
painting or drawing. This combination of the subjective and the objective is a
central tension in camera-generated images.
Photography was developed in Europe in the early nineteenth century,
when concepts of positivist science held sway. Positivism involves the belief
that empirical truths can be established through visual evidence. An em-
pirical truth is something that can be proven through experimentation, in
Practices of Looking16
particular through the reproduction of an experiment with identical outcomes
under carefully controlled circumstances. In positivism, the individual actions
of the scientist came to be viewed as a liability in the process of performing
and reproducing experiments, since it was thought that the scientist’s own
subjectivity would influence or prejudice the objectivity of the experiment.
Hence, machines were regarded as more reliable than humans. Similarly, pho-
tography is a method of producing images that involves a mechanical record-
ing device (the camera) rather than hand recording (pencil on paper). In the
context of positivism, the photographic camera was taken to be a scientific
tool for registering reality and regarded by its early advocates as a means of
representing the world more accurately than hand-rendered representations.
Since the mid-1800s, there have been many arguments for and against the
idea that photographs are objective renderings of the real world that provide
an unbiased truth because cameras are seemingly detached from a subjec-
tive, particular human viewpoint. These debates have taken on new intensity
with the introduction of digital imaging processes. A photograph is often per-
ceived to be an unmediated copy of the real world, a trace of reality skimmed
off the very surface of life. We refer to this concept as the myth of photo-
graphic truth. For instance, when a photograph is introduced as documentary
evidence in a courtroom, it is often presented as if it were incontrovertible
proof that an event took place in a particular way. As such, it is perceived to
speak the truth. At the same time, the truth-value of photography has been
the focus of many debates, in contexts such as courtrooms, about the differ-
ent “truths” that images can tell.
Camera images are also associated with truth-value in more everyday set-
tings. A photograph in a family album is often perceived to tell the truth, such
as the fact that a particular family gathering took place, a vacation was taken,
or a birthday was celebrated. Photographs have been used to prove that
someone was alive at a given place and time in history. For instance, after the
Holocaust, many survivors sent photographs to their families from whom they
had been long separated as an affirmation of their being alive. It is a paradox
of photography that although we know that images can be ambiguous and are
easily manipulated or altered, particularly with the help of computer graphics,
much of the power of photography still lies in the shared belief that
photographs are objective or truthful records of events. Our awareness of the
subjective nature of imaging is in constant tension with the legacy of objec-
tivity that clings to the cameras and machines that produce images today.
Practices of Looking 17
Yet, the sense that photographic images are evidence of the real also gives
them a kind of magical quality that adds to their documentary quality. The
images created by cameras can be simultaneously informative and expressive.
This photograph was taken by Robert Frank in his well-known photographic
essay, The Americans, which he created while travelling around the USA in the
mid-1950s. This image documents a segregated group of white and black pas-
sengers on a city trolley in New Orleans. As a factual piece of evidence about
the past, it records a particular moment in time in the racially segregated
American South of the 1950s. Yet, at the same time, this photograph does
more than document facts. For some contemporary viewers, this image is
magically moving insofar as it evokes powerful emotions about the momen-
tous changes about to occur in the American South. The picture was taken
just before laws, policies, and social mores concerning segregation began to
Practices of Looking18
Robert Frank,
Trolley–New Orleans,
1955–56
undergo radical changes in response to Civil Rights activism. The faces of the
passengers each look outward with different expressions, responding in dif-
ferent ways to the journey. It is as if the trolley itself represents the passage
of life, and the expressive faces of each passenger the way in which they con-
front and experience their life. The trolley riders seem to be eternally held
within the vehicle, a group of strangers thrown together to journey down the
same road, just as the Civil Rights era in the South brought together strangers
for a political journey. Thus, this photograph is valuable both as an empirical,
informational document and as an expressive vehicle. The power of the image
derives not only from its status as photographic evidence but from its power-
ful evocation of the emotions of life’s struggles. It thus demonstrates the
photograph’s capacity both to present evidence and to evoke a magical
or mythical quality.
In addition, this image, like all images, has two levels of meaning. French
theorist Roland Barthes described these two levels in the terms denotative
and connotative meaning. An image can denote certain apparent truths,
providing documentary evidence of objective circumstances. The denotative
meaning of the image refers to its literal, descriptive meaning. The same
photograph connotes more culturally specific meanings. Connotative mean-
ings rely on the cultural and historical context of the image and its viewers’
lived, felt knowledge of those circumstances—all that the image means to
them personally and socially. This Robert Frank photograph denotes a group
of passengers on a trolley. Yet, clearly its meaning is broader than this simple
description. This image connotes a collective journey of life and race relations.
The dividing line between what an image denotes and what it connotes can
be ambiguous, as in this image, where the facts of segregation alone may
produce particular connotative associations for some viewers. These two con-
cepts help us to think about the differences between images functioning as
evidence and as works that evoke more complex feelings and associations.
Another image of passengers on a trolley might connote a very different set
of meanings.
Roland Barthes used the term myth to refer to the cultural values and beliefs
that are expressed at this level of connotation. For Barthes, myth is the hidden
set of rules and conventions through which meanings, which are in reality
specific to certain groups, are made to seem universal and given for a whole
society. Myth thus allows the connotative meaning of a particular thing or
image to appear to be denotative, hence literal or natural. Hence, Barthes
Practices of Looking 19
argued, a French ad for Italian sauce and pasta is not simply presenting
a product but is producing a myth about Italian culture—the concept of
“Italianicity.”3 This message, wrote Barthes, is not for Italians, but is specifically
about a French concept of Italian culture. Similarly, one could argue that the
contemporary concepts of beauty and thinness naturalize certain cultural
norms of appearance as being universal. These norms constitute a myth in
Barthes’s terms, because they are historically and culturally specific, not
“natural.”
Barthes’s concepts of myth and connotation are particularly useful in exam-
ining notions of photographic truth. Among the range of images produced by
cameras, there are cultural meanings that affect our expectations and uses of
images. We do not, for example, bring the same expectations about the rep-
resentation of truth to newspaper photographs that we do to television news
images or to film images that we view in a movie theater. A significant differ-
ence among these forms is their relationship to time and their ability to be
widely reproduced. Whereas conventional photographs and films need to be
developed and printed before they can be viewed and reproduced, the elec-
tronic nature of television images means that they are instantly viewable and
can be transmitted around the world live. As moving images, cinematic and
television images are combined with sound and music in narrative forms, and
their meaning often lies in the sequence of images rather than its individual
frames.
Similarly, the cultural meanings of and expectations about computer and
digital images are different from those of conventional photographs. Because
computer images can look increasingly like photographs, people who produce
them sometimes play with the conventions of photographic realism. For
example, an image generated exclusively by computer graphics software can
be made to appear to be a photograph of actual objects, places, or people,
when in fact it is a simulation, that is, it does not represent something in the
real world. In addition, computer graphics programs can be used to modify or
rearrange the elements of a “realistic” photograph. Widespread use of digital
imaging technologies in the past decade has dramatically altered the status
of the photograph, particularly in the news media. Digital imaging thus can be
said to have partially eroded the public’s trust in the truth-value of photogra-
phy and the camera image as evidence. Yet, at the same time, the altered
image may still appear to represent a photographic truth. The meaning of an
Practices of Looking20
image, and our expectations of it, is thus tied to the technology through which
it is produced. We will discuss this further in Chapter 4.
Images and ideology
To explore the meaning of images is to recognize
that they are produced within dynamics of social power and ideology. Ideo-
logies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures. Images are an impor-
tant means through which ideologies are produced and onto which ideologies
are projected. When people think of ideologies, they often think in terms of
propaganda—the crude process of using false representations to lure people
into holding beliefs that may compromise their own interests. This under-
standing of ideology assumes that to act ideologically is to act out of igno-
rance. In this particular sense, the term “ideology” carries a pejorative cast.
However, ideology is a much more pervasive, mundane process in which we
all engage, whether we are aware of it or not. For our purposes, we define
ideology as the broad but indispensable, shared set of values and beliefs
through which individuals live out their complex relations to a range of social
structures. Ideologies are widely varied and exist at all levels of all cultures.
Our ideologies are diverse and ubiquitous; they inform our everyday lives in
often subtle and barely noticeable forms. One could say that ideology is the
means by which certain values, such as individual freedom, progress, and the
importance of home, are made to seem like natural, inevitable aspects of
everyday life. Ideology is manifested in widely shared social assumptions
about not only the way things are but the way we all know things should be.
Images and media representations are some of the forms through which we
persuade others to share certain views or not, to hold certain values or not.
Practices of looking are intimately tied to ideology. The image culture in
which we live is an arena of diverse and often conflicting ideologies. Images
are elements of contemporary advertising and consumer culture through
which assumptions about beauty, desire, glamour, and social value are both
constructed and responded to. Film and television are media through which
we see reinforced ideological constructions such as the value of romantic love,
the norm of heterosexuality, nationalism, or traditional concepts of good and
evil. The most important aspect of ideologies is that they appear to be natural
or given, rather than part of a system of belief that a culture produces in order
Practices of Looking 21
to function in a particular way. Ideologies are thus, like Barthes’s concept of
myth, connotations parading as denotations.
Visual culture is integral to ideologies and power relations. Ideologies
are produced and affirmed through the social institutions in a given society,
such as the family, education, medicine, the law, the government, and the
entertainment industry, among others. Ideologies permeate the world of
entertainment, and images are also used for regulation, categorization,
identification, and evidence. Shortly after photography was developed in the
early nineteenth century, private citizens began hiring photographers to make
individual and family portraits. Portraits often marked important moments
such as births, marriages, and even deaths (the funerary portrait was a
popular convention). But photographs were also widely regarded as tools of
science and of public surveillance. Astronomers spoke of using photographic
film to mark the movements of the stars. Photographs were used in hospitals,
mental institutions, and prisons to record, classify, and study populations.
Indeed, in rapidly growing urban industrial centers, photographs quickly
became an important way for police and public health officials to monitor
urban populations perceived to be growing not only in numbers, but also in
rates of crime and social deviance.
What is the legacy of this use of images as a means of controlling popula-
tions today? We live in a society in which portrait images are frequently used,
like fingerprints, as personal identification—on passports, driver’s licenses,
credit cards, and identification cards for schools, the welfare system, and
many other institutions. Photographs are a primary medium for evidence in
the criminal justice system. We are accustomed to the fact that most stores
and banks are outfitted with surveillance cameras and that our daily lives are
tracked not only through our credit records, but through camera records. On
a typical day of work, errands, and leisure, the activities of people in cities are
recorded, often unbeknownst to them, by numerous cameras. Often these
images stay within the realm of identification and surveillance, where they go
unnoticed by most of us. But sometimes their venues change and they circu-
late in the public realm, where they acquire new meanings.
This happened in 1994, when the former football star O. J. Simpson was
arrested as a suspect in a notorious murder case. Simpson’s image had pre-
viously appeared only in sports media, advertising, and celebrity news media.
He was rendered a different kind of public figure when his portrait, in the form
of his police mug shot, was published on the covers of Time and Newsweek
Practices of Looking22
Practices of Looking 23
magazines. The mug shot is a common use of photography in the criminal
justice system. Information about all arrested people, whether they are con-
victed or not, is entered into the system in the form of personal data, finger-
prints, and photographs. The conventions of the mug shot were presumably
familiar to most people who saw the covers of Time and Newsweek. Frontal
and side views of suspects’ unsmiling, unadorned faces are shot. These
conventions of framing and composition alone connote to viewers a sense
of the subject’s deviance and guilt, regardless of who is thus framed; the
image format has the power to suggest the photographic subject’s guilt.
O. J. Simpson’s mug shot seemed to be no different from any other in
this regard.
Whereas Newsweek used the mug shot as it was, Time heightened the con-
trast and darkened Simpson’s skin tone in its use of this image on the maga-
zine’s cover, reputedly for “aesthetic” reasons. Interestingly, the magazine’s
publishers do not allow this cover to be reproduced. What ideological assump-
tion might be said to underlie this concept of aesthetics? Critics charged that
Time was following the historical convention of using darker skin tones to
connote evil and to imply guilt. In motion pictures made during the first half
of this century, when black and Latino performers appeared, they were most
often cast in the roles of villains and evil characters. This convention tied into
the lingering ideologies of nineteenth-century racial science, in which it was
proposed that certain bodily forms and attributes, including darker shades of
skin, indicated a predisposition toward social deviance. Though this view was
contested in the twentieth century, darker skin tones nonetheless continued
to be used as literary, theatrical, and cinematic symbols of evil. Thus, dark-
ness came to connote negative qualities. Hollywood studios even developed
special makeup to darken the skin tones of Anglo, European, and light-skinned
black and Latino performers to emphasize a character’s evil nature.
In this broader context, the darkening of Simpson’s skin tone cannot be
seen as a purely aesthetic choice but rather an ideological one. Although the
magazine cover designers may not have intended to evoke this history of
media representations, we live in a culture in which the association of dark
tones with evil and the stereotype of black men as criminals still circulate. In
addition, because of the codes of the mug shot, it could be said that by simply
taking Simpson’s image out of the context of the police file and placing it in
the public eye, Time and Newsweek influenced the public to see Simpson as
a criminal even before he had been placed on trial.
Like Simpson’s mug shot, images often move across social arenas. Docu-
mentary images can appear in advertisements, amateur photographs and
videotapes can become news images, and news images are sometimes incor-
porated into art works. Each change in context produces a change in meaning.
Practices of Looking24
How we negotiate the meaning of images
The capacity of images to
affect us as viewers and consumers is dependent on the larger cultural mean-
ings they invoke and the social, political, and cultural contexts in which they
are viewed. Their meanings lie not within their image elements alone, but are
acquired when they are “consumed,” viewed, and interpreted. The meanings
of each image are multiple; they are created each time it is viewed.
We use many tools to interpret images and create meanings with them, and
we often use these tools of looking automatically, without giving them much
thought. Images are produced according to social and aesthetic conventions.
Conventions are like road signs; we must learn their codes for them to make
sense; the codes we learn become second nature. Just as we recognize the
meaning of most road sign symbols almost immediately, we read, or decode,
more complex images almost instantly, giving little thought to our process of
decoding. For instance, when we see the graphic of a torch that represents
the Olympic Games, we do not need to think through the process whereby we
come to make that association.
But our associations with symbols and codes and their meanings are far
from fixed. Some images demonstrate this process of change quite nicely by
playing on accepted conventions of representation to make us aware of the
Practices of Looking 25
almost arbitrary connections we take for granted between codes and their
meanings. The humor of this napkin advertisement depends on the viewer’s
knowledge of the ways that women are typically posed in a state of undress
in fashion advertisements. By putting a man in a pose coded as female, and
making a joke about what a napkin “covers” in a man, the advertisement puts
a humorous spin on the convention. This gender play might persuade poten-
tial consumers that the company advertised is not only aware of the gendered
nature of advertisement codes and products such as napkins, it is hip enough
to make a reflexive joke about it.
We decode images by interpreting clues to intended, unintended, and even
merely suggested meanings. These clues may be formal elements such as
color, shades of black and white, tone, contrast, composition, depth, per-
spective, and style of address to the viewer. As we saw in the case of the tonal
rendering of O. J. Simpson’s mug shot, seemingly neutral elements like tone
and color can take on cultural meanings. We also interpret images according
to their socio-historical contexts. For example, we may consider when and
where the image was made and displayed or the social context in which it is
presented. Just as Simpson’s mug shot took on new meanings when taken out
of police records and reproduced on the cover of popular magazines, so an
image appearing as a work of art in a museum takes on quite a different
meaning when it is reproduced in an advertisement. We are trained to read
for cultural codes such as aspects of the image that signify gendered, racial,
or class-specific meanings.
This advertisement by the clothing company Benetton has many layers of
meaning. This image denotes a car on fire on a city street. From a formal per-
spective, it is visually arresting; the flames create a striking image against the
dark background, setting an overall tone of danger and tension. Its impact
comes in part from what it demonstrates about the power of documentary
photography—the capacity of the camera to capture a fleeting moment in
time and freeze it. But what does this image mean? Where and when was it
taken? What kind of event does it depict? We are offered few clues about its
socio-historical elements; there is no caption, no descriptive text through
which the viewer might place this picture. Close examination reveals only that
a sign in the background appears European and the make of the car may place
it within a 1990s time frame.
However, the image’s time frame and placement within an advertisement
offers other clues. Prior to the 1970s, an image like this one would most likely
Practices of Looking26
have signified civil unrest or urban street crime—issues of national or local
concern. In the 1990s, it was more likely that the photograph connoted acts
of terrorism as they occurred routinely throughout the world in the late twen-
tieth century. Indeed, in the 1990s the connotation of terrorism was often
automatically overlaid onto images of street violence because of widespread
concerns, generated in part by the news media, about the apparently random
and arbitrary nature of terrorist violence. When this image signifies terrorism,
the specificity of its individual elements (which are not identified in the ad) lose
their power—it no longer matters where and when the event took place. What
matters is the larger symbolic meaning. In addition, the fact that this image is
presented in an advertisement adds another level of connotation—the image
is intended to transfer upon the name Benetton, and by extension the prod-
ucts offered by Benetton, a sense of social concern for the problems of the
world, including terrorism. It could be argued that Benetton selected this
generic image to invoke this contemporary issue, and to convey to viewers
that Benetton, unlike most other companies, is concerned with current
political issues. The ad constructs the idea that Benetton is a company with
Practices of Looking 27
a political stance that sells clothes to people who care about the realities of
contemporary politics on a global scale. (We will discuss this sort of advertis-
ing strategy at more length in Chapter 7.)
This process of interpretation is derived from semiotics. Every time we inter-
pret an image around us (to understand what it signifies), whether consciously
or not, we are using the tools of semiotics to understand its signification, or
meaning. The principles of semiotics were formulated by American philoso-
pher Charles Peirce in the nineteenth century and Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure in the early twentieth century. Both proposed important theories.
Saussure’s writing, however, has had the most influence on the theories of
structuralism that inform the ways of analyzing visual culture discussed in this
book. Language, according to Saussure, is like a game of chess. It depends on
conventions and codes for its meanings. At the same time, Saussure argued
that the relationship between a word (or the sound of that word when spoken)
and things in the world is arbitrary and relative, not fixed. For example, the
words “dog” in English, “chien” in French, and ‘hund” in German all refer to the
same kind of animal, hence the relationship between the words and the animal
itself is dictated by the conventions of language rather than some natural con-
nection. It was central to Saussure’s theory that meanings change according
to context and according to the rules of language.
Charles Sanders Peirce introduced the idea of a science of signs a bit before
Saussure developed his Course in General Linguistics. Peirce believed that lan-
guage and thought are processes of sign interpretation. For Peirce, meaning
resides not in the initial perception of a sign, but in the interpretation of the
perception and subsequent action based on that perception. Every thought is
a sign without meaning until a subsequent thought (what he called an inter-
pretant) allows for its interpretation. For example, we perceive an octagonal
red sign with the letters STOP inscribed. The meaning lies in the interpretation
of the sign and subsequent action (we stop).
Saussure’s ideas have since been explored by film scholars and theorists of
images, including Roland Barthes, to understand visual systems of represen-
tation, and Peirce’s concepts subsequently have been used for visual analysis.
For instance, film scholars adapted Saussure’s method to analyze the
language-like systems underlying the meanings produced in films. As with
language, films were understood to embody these systems not because their
directors or producers intentionally used them, but because the language of
film involved a set of rules or codes. There have been many revisions of the
Practices of Looking28
application of semiotics to images, but it nonetheless remains an important
method of visual analysis. We choose to concentrate in this book on the model
of semiotics introduced by Barthes and based on Saussure, since it offers a
clear and direct way to understand how images create meaning.
In Barthes’s model, in addition to the two levels of meaning of denotation
and connotation, there is the sign, which is composed of the signifier, a sound,
written word, or image, and the signified, which is the concept evoked by that
word/image. In the Benetton ad, one interpretation could be that the burning
car is the signifier, and terrorism is the signified. The image (or word) and its
meaning together (the signifier and signified together) form the sign.
Practices of Looking 29
Image/sound/word Æ Signifier
Meaning Æ Signified � SIGN
In the Benetton advertisement, the sign is an image or word can have many
meanings and constitute many signs. In certain contexts, this image might
mean civil unrest, wartime violence, etc., each of which constitutes a different
sign. Hence, the production of a sign is dependent on its social, historical, and
cultural context. It is also dependent on the context in which it is presented (in
a museum gallery or a magazine, for instance), and the viewers who interpret
it. We live in a world of signs, and it is the labor of our interpretation that makes
meaning of those signs. It is important to remember that we use semiotics all
the time without labeling it as such or recognizing our interpretative acts.
Often the meaning of an image is predominantly derived from the objects
within the frame. For instance, Marlboro advertisements are well known for
their equation of Marlboro cigarettes with masculinity: Marlboro (signifier) +
masculinity (signified) = Marlboro as masculinity (sign). The cowboy is featured
on horseback or just relaxing with a smoke, surrounded by natural beauty
evocative of the unspoiled American West. These advertisements connote
rugged individualism and life on the American frontier, when men were “real”
men. The Marlboro Man embodies a romanticized idea of freedom that stands
in contrast to the more confined lives of most workers. It is testimony to the
power of these ads to create the sign of Marlboro as masculinity (and the
Marlboro Man as connoting a lost ideal of masculinity) that many contempo-
rary Marlboro ads dispense with the cowboy altogether and simply show the
landscape, in which he exists by implication. This ad campaign also testifies
to the ways that objects can become gendered through advertising. It is a
little-known fact that Marlboro was marketed as a “feminine” cigarette (with
lipstick-red-tipped filters) until the 1950s, when the Marlboro Man made his
first appearance. Recently, the well-known huge Marlboro Man billboard on
Sunset Strip in Hollywood was taken down and replaced by an anti-smoking
billboard that mocks this icon of masculinity. This remake effectively uses the
Marlboro Man to create a new sign, that of Marlboro Man = loss of virility, or
smoking = impotence.
Our understanding of this image is dependent on our knowledge that
cowboys are disappearing from the American landscape, that they are cultural
symbols of a particular ideology of American expansionism and the frontier
that began to fade with urban industrialization and modernization. We bring to
this image cultural knowledge of the changing role of men and the recognition
that it indicates a fading stereotype of virility. The Marlboro Man has recently
been depicted on a motorcycle, but this updated figure nonetheless derives its
meaning from the contrast it presents to the traditional masculine image. Con-
temporary advertisements of men driving 4 ¥ 4 vehicles and pickup trucks
through rough landscapes also reference the codes of the Marlboro Man
to suggest an updated version of rugged male individualism. These vehicles,
many of the advertisements suggest, provide a new high-tech way to meet the
challenges of nature, allowing consumers to explore the wilderness without
the physical hardships of being exposed to the elements. Clearly, our interpre-
tation of images often depends upon historical context and the cultural knowl-
edge we bring to them—the conventions they use or play off of, the other
images they refer to, and the familiar figures and symbols they include.
We can see how Barthes’s model can be useful in examining how images
construct meanings. Moreover, the very fact that the sign is divided into a
signifier and a signified can show us that a variety of images can convey many
different meanings. As we noted, Barthes’s model is not the only model of
semiotics. For example, Charles Peirce worked with a somewhat different
model in which the signifier (word/image) is distinguished not only from the
signified (meaning) but also from the referent, or the object itself. In addition,
Peirce defined categories of signs based on different kinds of relationships
between signifiers and signifieds. For instance, Peirce made a distinction
between indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs. These categories have been
useful for the study of images, and we will discuss them in Chapter 4.
Practices of Looking30
The value of images
The work of detecting social, cultural, and historical
meanings in images often happens without our being aware of the process
and is part of the pleasure of looking at images. Some of the information
we bring to reading images has to do with what we perceive their value to
be in a culture at large. This raises the question: What gives an image social
value? Images do not have value in and of themselves, they are awarded
different kinds of value—monetary, social, and political—in particular
social contexts.
In the art market, the value of a work of art is determined by economic and
cultural factors. This painting of irises by Vincent Van Gogh achieved a new
level of fame in 1991 when it was sold for an unprecedented price of $53.8
million to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The painting in itself does not
reveal its worth, rather this is information we bring to an interpretation of it.
Practices of Looking 31
Vincent Van Gogh,
Irises, 1889
Why is this painting worth so much? Beliefs about a work’s authenticity and
uniqueness, as well as about its aesthetic style, contribute to its value. The
social mythology that surrounds a work of art or its artist can also contribute
to its value. Irises is considered authentic because it has been proven that it
is the original work by Van Gogh, not a copy. Van Gogh’s work is valued
because it is believed to be among the best examples of the innovative paint-
ing style of modernism in the late nineteenth century. The myths that surround
Van Gogh’s life and work also contribute to the value of his works. Most of us
know that Van Gogh lived an unhappy and mentally unstable life, that he cut
off his ear, and that he committed suicide. We may know more about his life
than we know about the technical and aesthetic judgements made by art his-
torians about his work. This information, while extraneous to the work, con-
tributes to its value—partly insofar as it plays into the stereotype or myth of
the creative artist as a sensitive figure whose artistic talent is not taught but
rather is a “natural” form of creativity that can border on madness.
This painting thus gains its economic value through cultural determinations
concerning what society judges to be important in assessing works of art.
Many factors contribute to the value of this painting. It is one of relatively few
works by the famous painter. It is regarded as authentic because it bears the
artist’s signature and has been verified by art historians. The artist has interna-
tional fame and notoriety that go beyond the work itself to include his person-
ality and life history. Finally, Van Gogh’s technique is regarded as unique and
superior among other works of the period. Part of our recognition of its value
has to do simply with its stature within institutions such as museums, art
history classes, and art auctions. One way that value is communicated is
through the mechanisms of art display. We often know a work of art is impor-
tant because it is encased in a gilded frame. This Häagen Dazs advertisement
humorously comments on this convention by placing the product within such
a frame to signify its status as the “masterpiece” of ice creams. We might
assume that a work of art is valuable simply because it is on display in a presti-
gious museum or, as is the case with a certain number of very famous images,
such as the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, because it is displayed behind
protective glass and surrounded by crowds of onlookers. In the 1910s, artist
Marcel Duchamp took a jab at this practice of venerating art objects in his
“readymades,” gallery and museum displays composed of mundane everyday
objects such as a bicycle wheel. In April of 1917 Duchamp contributed a
urinal, titled The Fountain and signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt, to a
Practices of Looking32
Practices of Looking 33
highly publicized painting exhibition he helped to organize. The exhibition’s
other organizers were offended by the piece and its clear message about
art’s value, taste, and the practices of display; they threw it out of the show.
Duchamp subsequently became the cause célebré of Dadaism, a movement
that reflexively poked fun at the conventions of high art and museum
display conventions.
While the fine art object often is valued because it is unique, it also is valued
because it can be reproduced for popular consumption. For example, Van
Gogh’s paintings have been reproduced endlessly in posters, postcards,
coffee mugs, and T-shirts. Ordinary consumers can own a copy of the highly
valued originals. Hence, the value of the original results not only from its
uniqueness but from its being the source from which reproductions are made.
Practices of Looking34
The manufacturers who produce art reproductions (posters, T-shirts, greeting
cards, etc.) and the consumers who purchase and display these items give
value to the work of art by making it available to many people as an item of
popular culture. We will discuss this aspect of image reproduction further in
Chapter 4.
There are other kinds of values that adhere to images in our culture—for
example, the value of an image to provide information and make distant
events accessible to large audiences. As images are increasingly easy to
electronically generate and reproduce, the values traditionally attributed to
them have changed. In any given culture, we use different criteria to evaluate
various media forms. Whereas we evaluate paintings according to the criteria
of uniqueness, authenticity, and market values, we may award value to televi-
sion news images, for instance, on the basis of their capacity to provide infor-
mation and accessibility. The value of a television news image lies in its
capacity to be transmitted quickly and widely to a vast number of geographi-
cally dispersed television screens.
This television news image of the student protest at Tiananmen Square in
Beijing in 1989 can be said to be a valuable image, although the criteria for its
value have nothing to do with the art market or its monetary value. The value
of this image is based in part on its specialness (it depicts a key moment in an
event of which media coverage was restricted) and the speed with which it
Practices of Looking 35
was transmitted around the world to provide information about that event. Its
value is also derived from its powerful depiction of the courage of one student
before the machinery of military power. Whereas its denotative meaning is
simply a young man stopping a tank, its connotative meaning is commonly
understood to be the importance of individual actions in the face of injustice.
This image thus has value not as a singular image (once broadcast, it was not
one image but millions of images on many different TV sets), but through its
speed of transmission, informative value, and its political statement. We can
say that it is culturally valuable because it makes a profound statement about
human will, and has thus become an image icon.
Image icons
This image of the lone student at Tiananmen Square has value
as an icon of world-wide struggles for democracy, precisely because many stu-
dents lost their lives in the protests. An icon is an image that refers to some-
thing outside of its individual components, something (or someone) that has
great symbolic meaning for many people. Icons are often perceived to repre-
sent universal concepts, emotions, and meanings. Thus, an image produced
in a specific culture, time, and place might be interpreted as having universal
meaning and the capacity to evoke similar responses across all cultures and
in all viewers. For example, the image of mother and child is ubiquitous in
Western art. It is widely believed to represent universal concepts of maternal
emotion, the essential bond between a mother and her offspring, and
the dependence of that child upon her. This image is perceived as an icon
of motherhood and, by extension, the importance of motherhood throughout
the world and in all human history. The sheer number of paintings created
with a mother and child theme throughout the history of Western art
attests not simply to the centrality of the Madonna figure in Christianity
but also to the idea that the bond between mother and child represetned
in images like this is universally understood to be natural, not culturally
constructed.
What would it mean to question the assumptions underpinning these con-
cepts of the universal? It would mean to look at the cultural, historical, and
social meanings that are specific in these images. There is an increased under-
standing that these concepts of the universal were actually restricted to
specific privileged groups. Icons do not represent individuals, but nor do they
Practices of Looking36
represent universal values. The mother and child motif present in these two
paintings by Italian painter Raphael and Dutch painter Joos van Cleve can be
read not as evidence of universal ideals of motherhood but as an indicator of
specific cultural values of motherhood and the role of women in Western
culture in the sixteenth century, particularly in Europe. Furthermore, these
images situated these figures within particular cultural landscapes, Raphael’s
Madonna before an Italian landscape, and van Cleve’s surrounded by symbols
of Dutch culture.
It is in relationship to this tradition of Madonna and child paintings that more
recent images of women and children gain meaning. For instance, this photo-
graph by Dorothea Lange depicts a woman, who is also apparently a mother,
during the California migration of the 1930s. This photograph is regarded as
an iconic image of the Great Depression in the United States. It is famous
because it evokes both the despair and the perseverance of those who sur-
vived the hardships of that time. Yet the image gains much of its meaning from
its implicit reference to the history of artistic depictions of women and their
children, such as Madonna and child images, and its difference from them.
This mother is hardly a nurturing figure. She is distracted. Her children cling
Practices of Looking 37
Raphael, The Small
Cowper Madonna,
c.1505
Joos van Cleve, Virgin
and Child, 1525
to her and burden her thin frame. She looks not at her children but outward
as if toward her future—one seemingly with little promise. This image derives
its meaning largely from a viewer’s knowledge of the historical moment it rep-
resents. At the same time, it makes a statement about the complex role of
motherhood that is informed by its traditional representation. Like the earlier
images, this photograph denotes a mother with children, but it casts this social
relationship in terms of hunger, poverty, struggle, loss, and strength. Thus, it
can be read in a number of ways.
Image icons can also evoke pleasure and desire. One could argue, for
instance, that this image of Marilyn Monroe is an icon of glamour. Monroe
embodies many of the stereotypical ingredients for twentieth-century Ameri-
can concepts of feminine beauty and sexuality—her wavy blond hair, open
smile, and full figure. Concepts of glamour and sexiness form the basis of most
advertising. What counts as glamorous or sexy, however, changes according
to shifts in cultural ideas about beauty and visual pleasure. The cultural pref-
erence for full-figured women was replaced in the late twentieth century by
Practices of Looking38
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother,
Nipomo, California, 1936
an idealization of a thin or athletic body. As John Berger has written, glamour
is the quality of being envied.4 Monroe’s glamour is derived in part through
the combination of her apparent accessibility to the camera (and, by exten-
sion, to the viewer) through the medium of photography, and the unattainable,
distant quality of her image. We want what she has precisely because it
appears to be beyond our reach.
Artist Andy Warhol made works about the commodity culture that rendered
women like Marilyn Monroe cultural icons whose images were familiar to vir-
tually the entire nation. Warhol took an iconic, glamorous image of Marilyn
Monroe and printed multiple versions of it into a colorful grid. His Marilyn
Monroe Diptych (1962) comments not only upon the star’s iconic status as a
glamour figure, but also on the role of the star as media commodity—as a
product of the entertainment industry that could be infinitely flreproduced for
mass consumption. Warhol’s work emphasizes one of the most important
aspects of contemporary images: the capacity to reproduce them in many dif-
ferent contexts, thereby changing their meaning and altering their value—and
that of the objects or people they represent—as commodities. In this work,
the multiple images of Monroe emphasize that cultural icons can and must be
mass-distributed in order for them to have mass appeal. These copies do not
Practices of Looking 39
refer back to the original so much as they indicate the endless reproducibility
of Monroe as a mass-produced object to be consumed.
To call an image an icon raises the question of context. For whom is this
image iconic and for whom is it not? These images of motherhood and
glamour are specific to particular cultures at particular moments in time. One
could regard them as indicators of the cultural values attributed to women
throughout history, and the restrictive roles women have often been allocated
(mother or sex symbol, virgin or vamp). As we have noted, images have diver-
gent meanings in different cultural and historical contexts.
When, for instance, Benetton produced this advertisement of a black
woman nursing a white child, a range of interpretations were possible. This
advertisement was published throughout Europe, but magazines in the United
States refused to run it. The image can be understood in the history of images
of mother and child, although its meaning is contingent on the viewer’s
assumption, on the basis of the contrast of their skin color, that this woman is
not the child’s biological mother but its caretaker. While in certain contexts,
this image might connote racial harmony, in the United States it carried other
connotations, most troubling the history of slavery in the United States and
the use of black women slaves as “wet nurses” to breast-feed the white chil-
Practices of Looking40
Andy Warhol, Marilyn
Diptych, 1962
dren of their owners. Thus, the intended meaning of this image as an icon of
an idealized interracial mother-child relationship is not easily conveyed in a
context where the image’s meanings are overdetermined by historical factors.
Similarly, the classical art history image of Madonna and child may not serve
as an icon for motherhood in many other cultures, but rather as an example
of specifically Western and particularly Christian beliefs about women’s role as
mothers.
When images acquire the status of icons, which are commonly understood,
they also can become the object of humorous or ironic interpretations. For
instance, pop star Madonna gained notoriety by playing off both the Madonna
and Marilyn Monroe. Madonna borrowed and reworked the elements of both
these cultural icons. Not only did she use the name Madonna, early in her
career she wore and used as props various symbols of Catholicism, such as
crosses. Similarly, at one point she assumed Monroe’s blond hair color and
the look of her glamorous 1940s wardrobe. Through these acts of cultural
appropriation, Madonna both acquired the power of these icons and
reflected ironically on their meaning in the climate of the 1980s and 1990s. In
Practices of Looking 41
contemporary culture, many cultural icons are thus reused, parodied, and
ironically updated.
To interpret images is to examine the assumptions that we and others bring
to them, and to decode the visual language that they “speak.” All images
contain layers of meaning that include their formal aspects, their cultural and
socio-historical references, the ways they make reference to the images
that precede and surround them, and the contexts in which they are dis-
played. Reading and interpreting images is one way that we, as viewers,
contribute to the process of assigning value to the culture in which we
live. Practices of looking, then, are not passive acts of consumption. By looking
and engaging with images in the world, we influence the meanings and
uses assigned to the images that fill our day-to-day lives. In the next chapter,
we will examine the many ways that viewers create meaning when
they engage in looking.
Practices of Looking42
Notes
1. See Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the
Golden Age (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1988), ch. 3.
2. See Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe, with illustrations and letters by René Magritte, trans-
lated and edited by James Harkness (Berkeley and London: University of California Press,
1983; originally published in France, 1982).
3. Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image,” from Image Music Text, translated by Stephen
Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 34.
4. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York and London: Penguin, 1972), 131.
Further Reading
Roland Barthes. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, [1957]
1972.
—— Elements of Semiology. Translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1967.
—— “The Photographic Message” and “Rhetoric of the Image.” In Image Music Text. Translated
by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.
—— Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1981.
John Berger. Ways of Seeing. New York and London: Penguin, 1972.
Inguar Bergstrom. Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century. London: Faber and Faber,
1956.
Norman Bryson. Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting. Cambridge, Mass.
and London: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Victor Burgin, ed. Thinking Photography. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Michel Foucault. This Is Not a Pipe. With illustrations and letters by René Magritte. Translated
and edited by James Harkness. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1983;
originally published in France, 1982.
Henry Giroux. “Consuming Social Change: The United Colors of Benetton.” In Disturbing
Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture. New York and London: Routledge, 1994.
Stuart Hall, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Thousand
Oaks, Calif. and London: Sage, 1997.
Terence Hawkes. Structuralism and Semiotics. Berkeley and London: University of California
Press, 1977.
Floyd Merrel. Semiosis in the Postmodern Age. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1995.
—— Peirce, Signs, and Meaning. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.
Christian Metz. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Translated by Michael Taylor.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1974] 1991.
Nicholas Mirzoeff. An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York and London: Routledge, 1999.
Richard Robin. Annotated Catalog of the Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1998. On-line at: ·www.iupui.edu/%7Epeirce/web/index.htmÒ.
Ferdinand de Saussure. Course in General Linguistics. Contributor Charles Bally. Translated by
Roy Harris. Chicago: Open Court Publishing, [1915] 1988.
Simon Schama. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden
Age. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1988.
Thomas A. Sebeck. Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1995.
Allan Sekula. “On the Invention of Photographic Meaning.” In Thinking Photography. Edited by
Victor Burgin. London: Macmillan, 1982, 84–109.
Kaja Silverman. The Subject of Semiotics. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Practices of Looking 43
Susan Sontag. On Photography. New York: Delta, 1977.
Mary Anne Staniszewski. Believing is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art. New York and London:
Penguin, 1995.
John Storey, ed. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1998.
Peter Wollen. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1969.
Practices of Looking44