Course:LIBR559A/Howells, R. and Negreiros, J. (2013)

Citation

Howells, Richard and Negreiros, Joaquim. (2013). Visual Culture (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Annotation

Richard Howells is a Cultural Sociologist at King’s College in London. He has done print, broadcast, and radio work for the BBC both with journalism and production. Currently he is the Director of the Centre for Cultural, Media, and Creative Industries at King’s College. The first section of the book is on methods and the second is on media. Howells and Negreiros use specific art pieces to describe how art and society are interconnected and feed off one another. Through examining various types of media, they explain how those technologies have impacted how visual culture is displayed and understood. In the theory section they cover iconology, art history, form, and ideology. Semiotics discusses signs and symbols and their interpretations within various societies. They explain how these signs and symbols change over time and what we may now perceive one way, was once viewed in an entirely different light. These interpretations change over cultures as well as time. Hermeneutics explains interpretations in much the same way, particularly within Biblical and literary texts. In section II, the forms of media discussed are Fine Art, Photography, Film, Television, and New Media bringing in the theories that were introduced throughout section I. Throughout there is a connecting of the visual world and reality. This text is very interesting in its approach to not only explain the theories associated with visual culture, but why people perceive things as one way or another. The information provided is beneficial to anyone, particularly those that work with visual arts in all of its forms. There is no escaping the impact of the visual world and how it can work with or against cultures. Having knowledge of visual culture and relevancies can assist in dealing with information, databases, and other systems on a daily basis. There is a level of interpretation and analysis that can be done in even the most mundane appearing advertisement. It all relates to societies and cultures. In this field, it is important to be able to recognize various elements and apply them to the times in which they were created.

Areas / Topics / Keywords

Visual Culture, Art and Society, Education

Page author: Kelly Murphy