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| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: How to See the World Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2015-06-04 In recent decades, we have witnessed an explosion in the number of visual images we encounter, as our lives have become increasingly saturated with screens. From Google Images to Instagram, video games to installation art, this transformation is confusing, liberating and worrying all at once, since observing the new visuality of culture is not the same as understanding it. Nicholas Mirzoeff is a leading figure in the field of visual culture, which aims to make sense of this extraordinary explosion of visual experiences. As Mirzoeff reminds us, this is not the first visual revolution; the 19th century saw the invention of film, photography and x-rays, and the development of maps, microscopes and telescopes made the 17th century an era of visual discovery. But the sheer quantity of images produced on the internet today has no parallels. In the first book to define visual culture for the general reader, Mirzoeff draws on art history, theory and everyday experience to provide an engaging and accessible overview of how visual materials shape and define our lives. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: An Introduction to Visual Culture Nicholas Mirzoeff, 1999 The author traces the history and theory of visual culture asking how and why visual media have become so central to contemporary everyday life. He explores a wide range of visual forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, television, cinema, virtual reality, and the Internet while addressing the subjects of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, the body, and the international media event that followed the death of Princess Diana. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Watching Babylon Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2012-10-12 Groundbreaking and compelling, Watching Babylon examines the experience of watching the war against Iraq on television, on the internet, in the cinema and in print media. Mirzoeff shows how the endless stream of images flowing from the Gulf has necessitated a new form of visual thinking, one which recognises that the war has turned images themselves into weapons. Drawing connections between the history and legend of ancient Babylon, the metaphorical Babylon of Western modernity, and everyday life in the modern suburb of Babylon, New York, Mirzoeff explores ancient concerns which have found new resonance in the present day. In the tradition of Walter Benjamin, Watching Babylon illuminates the Western experience of the Iraqi war and makes us re-examine the very way we look at images of conflict. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Silent Poetry Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2019-01-15 Sign wars -- The Art of signing -- Ancient gestures, modern signs -- French ancients and moderns -- The Deaf in the harem -- The Deafness of the ancients -- Philosophy and the sign -- Sign at the salon -- Signs of the revolution -- Signs and Citizens : Regeneration and the Deaf -- The Politics of Deafness -- The Normal and the pathological -- David's studio and the Deaf -- The Mimicry of mimesis : Morality, sign and pathology -- Mimicry, copying and orginality -- Revolt and organization -- Cultural politics -- A Culture of gestures -- Mimicry and mimesis -- Visualizing Anthropology : Touch, the hand and gesture -- Evolutionism, art, and the sign -- The Silent monument -- Milan and after -- A Deaf Variety of Modernism? : Republican morality -- The Deaf artists and the museum -- Gesture and hysteria -- Deaf Republicans -- Deaf artists and the Third Republic -- The Deaf and the Dreyfus Affair -- Eugenics and the Deaf -- Deaf moderns -- Anthropology and philosophy -- Art history -- Deaf culture. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: The Visual Culture Reader Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2002 This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of The Visual Culture Readerbrings together key writings as well as specially commissioned articles covering a wealth of visual forms including photography, painting, sculpture, fashion, advertising, television, cinema and digital culture. The Readerfeatures an introductory section tracing the development of visual culture studies in response to globalization and digital culture, and articles grouped into thematic sections, each prefaced by an introduction by the editor and conclude with suggestions for further reading. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Diaspora and Visual Culture Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2014-04-04 This is the first book to examine the connections between diaspora - the movement, whether forced or voluntary, of a nation or group of people from one homeland to another - and its representations in visual culture. Two foundational articles by Stuart Hall and the painter R.B. Kitaj provide points of departure for an exploration of the meanings of diaspora for cultural identity and artistic practice. A distinguished group of contributors, who include Alan Sinfield, Irit Rogoff, and Eunice Lipton, address the rich complexity of diasporic cultures and art, but with a focus on the visual culture of the Jewish and African diasporas. Individual articles address the Jewish diaspora and visual culture from the 19th century to the present, and work by African American and Afro-Brazilian artists. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Bodyscape Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2018-10-08 Western art has long sought to visualize the perfect body. Whether composed from fragments or derived from a single model, this ideal, straight, white body is now in crisis. But what will take its place? In Bodyscape, Nicholas Mirzoeff traces the roots of our current obsession with body images from revolutionary France to contemporary New York. He argues that the representation of the body has always shaped, and been shaped by, crises of political and cultural identity. Mirzoeff's illuminating study engages with artists' work in painting, sculpture, photography and film, showing the centrality of the body in the work of artists ranging from Leonardo, Manet and Poussin, to photographers Julia Margaret Cameron and Paul Strand, to Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith and Nancy Spero. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: The Brutish Museums Dan Hicks, 2020 Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objectsare all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of brass plaques and carved ivory tusks depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of BeninCity, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museums, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: After Extinction Richard Grusin, 2018-03-20 A multidisciplinary exploration of extinction and what comes next What comes after extinction? Including both prominent and unusual voices in current debates around the Anthropocene, this collection asks authors from diverse backgrounds to address this question. After Extinction looks at the future of humans and nonhumans, exploring how the scale of risk posed by extinction has changed in light of the accelerated networks of the twenty-first century. The collection considers extinction as a cultural, artistic, and media event as well as a biological one. The authors treat extinction in relation to a variety of topics, including disability, human exceptionalism, science-fiction understandings of time and posthistory, photography, the contemporary ecological crisis, the California Condor, systemic racism, Native American traditions, and capitalism. From discussions of the anticipated sixth extinction to the status of writing, theory, and philosophy after extinction, the contributions of this volume are insightful and innovative, timely and thought provoking. Contributors: Daryl Baldwin, Miami U; Claire Colebrook, Pennsylvania State U; William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins U; Ashley Dawson, CUNY Graduate Center; Joseph Masco, U of Chicago; Nicholas Mirzoeff, New York U; Margaret Noodin, U of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Jussi Parikka, U of Southampton; Bernard C. Perley, U of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Cary Wolfe, Rice U; Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths, U of London. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Permanent Crisis Paul Reitter, Chad Wellmon, 2023-04-05 Any reader of the Chronicle of Higher Education can tell you that the humanities are in crisis. Seen as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, humanistic disciplines seem at the mercy of modernizing forces driving the university towards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show, this crisis isn't new--in fact, it's as old as the humanities themselves. Today's humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are strikingly similar to the response of their nineteenth-century German counterparts. In German universities of the 1800s, as in those in the United States today, humanities scholars felt threatened by the very processes that allowed the modern humanities to flourish, such as institutional rationalization and the commodification of knowledge. But Reitter and Wellmon also emphasize the constructive side of crisis discourse. They claim that the self-understanding of the modern humanities didn't merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis; it also made crisis a core part of its project. The humanities came into their own by framing themselves as a unique resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. With this critical, historical perspective, Permanent Crisiscan take humanists beyond the usual scolding, exhorting, and handwringing into clearer, more effective thinking about the fate of the humanities. Furthering ideas from Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche to Andrew Delbanco and William Deresiewicz, Reitter and Wellmon dig into the notion of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world-- |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Unfathomable City Rebecca Solnit, Rebecca Snedeker, 2013-11-18 Presents twenty-two color maps and accompanying essays providing details on the people, ecology, and culture of the city. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Nonhuman Photography Joanna Zylinska, 2024-07-02 A new philosophy of photography that goes beyond humanist concepts to consider imaging practices from which the human is absent, as both subject and agent. Today, in the age of CCTV, drones, medical body scans, and satellite images, photography is increasingly decoupled from human agency and human vision. In Nonhuman Photography, Joanna Zylinska offers a new philosophy of photography, going beyond the human-centric view to consider imaging practices from which the human is absent. Zylinska argues further that even those images produced by humans, whether artists or amateurs, entail a nonhuman, mechanical element—that is, they involve the execution of technical and cultural algorithms that shape our image-making devices as well as our viewing practices. At the same time, she notes, photography is increasingly mobilized to document the precariousness of the human habitat and tasked with helping us imagine a better tomorrow. With its conjoined human-nonhuman agency and vision, Zylinska claims, photography functions as both a form of control and a life-shaping force. Zylinska explores the potential of photography for developing new modes of seeing and imagining, and presents images from her own photographic project, Active Perceptual Systems. She also examines the challenges posed by digitization to established notions of art, culture, and the media. In connecting biological extinction and technical obsolescence, and discussing the parallels between photography and fossilization, she proposes to understand photography as a light-induced process of fossilization across media and across time scales. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Violence Brad Evans, Natasha Lennard, 2018-12-04 Through a series of penetrating conversations originally published in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard talk with a wide range of cutting edge thinkers--including Oliver Stone, Simon Critchley, and Elaine Scarry--to explore the problem of violence in everyday life, politics, culture, media, language, memory, and the environment. To bring out the best of us, writes Evans, we have to confront the worst of what humans are capable of doing to one another. In short, there is a need to confront the intolerable realities of violence in this world. These lively, in-depth exchanges among historians, theorists, and artists offer a timely and bracing look at how the increasing expression and acceptance of violence--in all strata of society--has become a defining feature of our times. Many of us live today with a pervasive sense of unease, worried that our own safety is at risk, or that of our loved ones, or that of people whose bad circumstances appear to us through networked media. Violence feels ever-present. Natasha Lennard and Brad Evans help us to analyze those feelings, talking with a wide range of thinkers in order to gain insight into the worst of what humans do, and challenging us to imagine a world in which violence is no longer a given. Their book is full of surprising insights and intelligent compassion.--Sarah Leonard, co-editor of The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century In Violence, Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard have created, alongside their interview subjects, a kaleidoscopic exploration of the concept of violence, in terrains expected and not, in prose taut and unexpectedly gorgeous. Their philosophical rigor provides the reader with an intellectual arsenal against the violence of the current moment.--Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood We would be wise to read this collection with a similar eye toward service, and in so doing, open ourselves up to the rare mercy of no longer having to stand on our own.--Alana Massey, author of All The Lives I Want The range of interviews with leading academics, to filmmakers and artists, is impressive, at once immediate and relevant, but also profoundly philosophical. More essentially, though, the conversations underline the need and suggest ways to resist and organize in a visionary way, in the extraordinary times we live in.--Razia Iqbal, BBC News Notable contemporary thinkers and creators give their individual perspectives in this compelling look at violence. . . . A provocative volume that challenges humanity to correct its runaway course toward an increasingly violent future by learning from its violent past.--Kirkus Reviews The purpose of the work is to challenge humanity to create more meaningful solutions when it comes to these kinds of violence--or at least to name violence without inadvertently inciting even more anger. . . . passion roars through every chapter . . . This book delivers on what it promises, which is an achievement. --Alison Gately, The Los Angeles Review of Books If you wish to read the intellectualization of violence, Violence is a phenomenal anthology. . . . Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard, the interviewers and the 'authors' of the anthology, have done a remarkable job in bringing together perceptive and intelligent contributors from various fields to scout the reaches of violence. Their piercing questions brought out brilliant responses from the interviewees.--L. Ali Khan, New York Journal of Books Violence: Humans in Dark Times is an intriguing beginning to a much-needed sustained intellectual and aesthetic response to the horrors of modern times.—Zoe Vorsino |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: The Aesthetics of Global Protest Aidan McGarry, Itir Erhart, Hande Eslen-Ziya, Olu Jenzen, Umut Korkut, 2019-12-09 Protestors across the world use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas and ensure their voices are heard. This book looks at protest aesthetics, which we consider to be the visual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, art, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces. Through the use of social media, protestors have been able to create an alternative space for people to engage with politics that is more inclusive and participatory than traditional politics. This volume focuses on the role of visual culture in a highly mediated environment and draws on case studies from Europe, Thailand, South Africa, USA, Argentina, and the Middle East in order to demonstrate how protestors use aesthetics to communicate their demands and ideas. It examines how digital media is harnessed by protestors and argues that all protest aesthetics are performative and communicative. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Exploding Aesthetics Annette W. Balkema, Henk Slager, 2001 'L&B Series oranized three symposia evenings in October 2000 under the title Exploding Aesthetics, in cooperation with De Appel Centre for Contemperary Art, Amsterdam. Besides the presentations and discussions from these symposia, this volume includes various arguments, positions, and statements in both articles and interviews by a variety of visual artists, designers, advertising professionals, theorists and curators.'(Cover) |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Visual Culture Margaret Dikovitskaya, 2006-02-24 The history, theoretical frameworks, methodology, and pedagogy of the new field of visual culture; current debates and the possibility for future consensus. In recent years, visual culture has emerged as a growing and important interdisciplinary field of study. Visual culture regards images as central to the representation of meaning in the world. It encompasses high art without an assumption of its higher status. But despite the current proliferation of studies and programs in visual culture, there seems to be no consensus within the field itself as to its scope and objectives, definitions, and methods. In Visual Culture, Margaret Dikovitskaya offers an overview of this new area of study in order to reconcile its diverse theoretical positions and understand its potential for further research. Her aim is to show how visual culture can avoid what she defines as the Scylla and Charybdis that threaten it: the lack of a specific object of study (given its departure from the traditional hierarchies of art history) and the expansion of the field to the point of incoherence as it seems to subsume everything related to the cultural and the visual. Dikovitskaya gives us an archaeology of visual culture, examining the cultural turn away from art history and the emergence of visual studies. Drawing on responses to questionnaires, oral histories, and interviews with the field's leading scholars, she discusses first the field's history, theoretical frameworks, and methods, and then examines four programs and courses in visual culture—those at the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, the University of California at Irvine, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Bringing together considerations of theory and practice, Dikovitskaya charts the future of visual culture programs in the twenty-first century. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: A Camera in the Garden of Eden Kevin Coleman, 2016-02-23 In the early twentieth century, the Boston-based United Fruit Company controlled the production, distribution, and marketing of bananas, the most widely consumed fresh fruit in North America. So great was the company’s power that it challenged the sovereignty of the Latin American and Caribbean countries in which it operated, giving rise to the notion of company-dominated “banana republics.” In A Camera in the Garden of Eden, Kevin Coleman argues that the “banana republic” was an imperial constellation of images and practices that was checked and contested by ordinary Central Americans. Drawing on a trove of images from four enormous visual archives and a wealth of internal company memos, literary works, immigration records, and declassified US government telegrams, Coleman explores how banana plantation workers, women, and peasants used photography to forge new ways of being while also visually asserting their rights as citizens. He tells a dramatic story of the founding of the Honduran town of El Progreso, where the United Fruit Company had one of its main divisional offices, the rise of the company now known as Chiquita, and a sixty-nine day strike in which banana workers declared their independence from neocolonial domination. In telling this story, Coleman develops a new set of conceptual tools and methods for using images to open up fresh understandings of the past, offering a model that is applicable far beyond this pathfinding study. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Planet TV Lisa Parks, Shanti Kumar, 2003 Provides an overview of the rapidly changing landscape of global television, combining previously published essays by pioneers of the study of television with new work by cutting-edge television scholars who refine and extend intellectual debates in the field. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Visual Culture Alexis L. Boylan, 2020-08-11 How to think about what it means to look and see: a guide for navigating the complexities of visual culture. The visual surrounds us, some of it invited, most of it not. In this visual environment, everything we see—color, the moon, a skyscraper, a stop sign, a political poster, rising sea levels, a photograph of Kim Kardashian West—somehow becomes legible, normalized, accessible. How does this happen? How do we live and move in our visual environments? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a guide for navigating the complexities of visual culture, outlining strategies for thinking about what it means to look and see—and what is at stake in doing so. Visual culture has always been inscribed by the dominant and by domination. This book suggests how we might weaponize the visual for positive, unifying change. Drawing on both historical and contemporary examples—from Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party and Beyoncé and Jay-Z at the Louvre to the first images of a black hole—Alexis Boylan considers how we engage with and are manipulated by what we see. She begins with what: what is visual culture, and what questions, ideas, and quandaries animate our approach to the visual? She continues with where: where are we allowed to see it, and where do we stand when we look? Then, who: whose bodies have been present or absent from visual culture, and who is allowed to see it? And, finally, when: is the visual detached from time? When do we see what we need to see? |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: What Do Pictures Want? W. J. T. Mitchell, 2005-06-15 The author argues that we need to reckon with images not merely as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, and drives of their own. He explores this idea and highlights his innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: STEALING FROM THE SARACENS DIANA. DARKE, 2024 |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: The Appearance of Black Lives Matter Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2017-08-15 |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Cognitive Surplus Clay Shirky, 2010-06-10 The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us for the better. In his bestselling Here Comes Everybody, Internet guru Clay Shirky provided readers with a much-needed primer for the digital age. Now, with Cognitive Surplus, he reveals how new digital technology is unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. For the first time, people are embracing new media that allow them to pool their efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind-expanding reference tools like Wikipedia to life-saving Web sites like Ushahidi.com, which allows Kenyans to report acts of violence in real time. Cognitive Surplus explores what's possible when people unite to use their intellect, energy, and time for the greater good. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Visual Global Politics Roland Bleiker, 2018-02-13 We live in a visual age. Images and visual artefacts shape international events and our understanding of them. Photographs, film and television influence how we view and approach phenomena as diverse as war, diplomacy, financial crises and election campaigns. Other visual fields, from art and cartoons to maps, monuments and videogames, frame how politics is perceived and enacted. Drones, satellites and surveillance cameras watch us around the clock and deliver images that are then put to political use. Add to this that new technologies now allow for a rapid distribution of still and moving images around the world. Digital media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, play an important role across the political spectrum, from terrorist recruitment drives to social justice campaigns. This book offers the first comprehensive engagement with visual global politics. Written by leading experts in numerous scholarly disciplines and presented in accessible and engaging language, Visual Global Politics is a one-stop source for students, scholars and practitioners interested in understanding the crucial and persistent role of images in today’s world. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: How Photography Became Contemporary Art Andy Grundberg, 2021-02-23 A leading critic’s inside story of “the photo boom” during the crucial decades of the 1970s and 80s When Andy Grundberg landed in New York in the early 1970s as a budding writer, photography was at the margins of the contemporary art world. By 1991, when he left his post as critic for the New York Times, photography was at the vital center of artistic debate. Grundberg writes eloquently and authoritatively about photography’s “boom years,” chronicling the medium’s increasing role within the most important art movements of the time, from Earth Art and Conceptual Art to performance and video. He also traces photography’s embrace by museums and galleries, as well as its politicization in the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. Grundberg reflects on the landmark exhibitions that defined the moment and his encounters with the work of leading photographers—many of whom he knew personally—including Gordon Matta-Clark, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Mapplethorpe. He navigates crucial themes such as photography’s relationship to theory as well as feminism and artists of color. Part memoir and part history, this perspective by one of the period’s leading critics ultimately tells a larger story about the crucial decades of the 70s and 80s through the medium of photography. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Finite Media Sean Cubitt, 2016-12-08 While digital media give us the ability to communicate with and know the world, their use comes at the expense of an immense ecological footprint and environmental degradation. In Finite Media Sean Cubitt offers a large-scale rethinking of theories of mediation by examining the environmental and human toll exacted by mining and the manufacture, use, and disposal of millions of phones, computers, and other devices. The way out is through an eco-political media aesthetics, in which people use media to shift their relationship to the environment and where public goods and spaces are available to all. Cubitt demonstrates this through case studies ranging from the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang to an image of Saturn taken during NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission, suggesting that affective responses to images may generate a populist environmental politics that demands better ways of living and being. Only by reorienting our use of media, Cubitt contends, can we overcome the failures of political elites and the ravages of capital. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Dark Matter Gregory Sholette, 2010-12-15 Art is big business, with some artists able to command huge sums of money for their works, while the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. This book shows that these marginalized artists, the dark matter of the art world, are essential to the survival of the mainstream and that they frequently organize in opposition to it. Gregory Sholette, a politically engaged artist, argues that imagination and creativity in the art world originate thrive in the non-commercial sector shut off from prestigious galleries and champagne receptions. This broader creative culture feeds the mainstream with new forms and styles that can be commodified and used to sustain the few artists admitted into the elite. This dependency, and the advent of inexpensive communication, audio and video technology, has allowed this dark matter of the alternative art world to increasingly subvert the mainstream and intervene politically as both new and old forms of non-capitalist, public art. This book is essential for anyone interested in interventionist art, collectivism, and the political economy of the art world. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: The Echo of Things Christopher Wright, 2013-11-13 The Echo of Things is a compelling ethnographic study of what photography means to the people of Roviana Lagoon in the western Solomon Islands. Christopher Wright examines the contemporary uses of photography and expectations of the medium in Roviana, as well as people's reactions to photographs made by colonial powers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For Roviana people, photographs are unique objects; they are not reproducible, as they are in Euro-American understandings of the medium. Their status as singular objects contributes to their ability to channel ancestral power, and that ability is a key to understanding the links between photography, memory, and history in Roviana. Filled with the voices of Roviana people, The Echo of Things is both a nuanced study of the lives of photographs in a particular cultural setting and a provocative inquiry into our own understandings of photography. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: The Appearance of Black Lives Matter Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2017-06 Police killings captured on cell-phone video or photographs have become the hallmark of United States visual culture in the twenty-first century. In this book, I examine this transformation of visual culture from the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in the summer of 2014 to the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017. As a person designated “white” by the color line in the United States, I do so from the perspective of anti-antiblackness. I study the formation of the space of appearance, that space where we catch a glimpse of the society that is to come—the future commons or communism. The first section analyses such spaces created by abolition democracy in Haiti, during Reconstruction and at Resurrection City in 1968. The second section considers the “persistent looking” used by Black Lives Matter protests from Ferguson on, especially “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” the die-in and the turning of backs. I then explore a simple form of visual activism, cropping photographs of crime scenes to exclude the fallen and broken bodies. It reveals the space of nonappearance, the no one’s land where people die in America. In the third section, I use the archive created by the grand jury hearings into the death of Michael Brown to map this space of nonappearance and how it is sustained by white supremacy. At present, that space is imagined as co-extensive with the boundaries of the republic. I still want a space in which to appear that doesn’t reproduce white supremacy, that doesn’t represent a prison, in which there isn’t expropriated labor, and there isn’t genocide. What would that look like? This book is a toolkit for doing that imagining. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Reading the Visual Tony Schirato, 2020-07-29 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. Drawing on a range of theorists including John Berger, Foucault, Bourdieu and Crary, the authors outline our relationship to the visual, tracing changes to literacies, genres and pleasures affecting ways of seeing from the Enlightenment to the advent of virtual technology. Reading the Visual is an invaluable introduction to visual culture for readers across the humanities and social sciences. Eloquently written, admirably clear, passionately argued, Schirato and Webb have given us one of the best textbooks on the emergent field of visual culture. Smart, clear and relevant examples challenge readers to question their visual environments and become critics and creators themselves.' Professor Sean Cubitt, University of Waikato This is a splendid book. It is both intellectually sophisticated and written in an extremely accessible manner.' Professor Jim McGuigan, Loughborough University This book treats the interpretation and value of visual artefacts with depth, while remaining highly accessible. It is very readable: written in a lively and engaging style with examples that are refreshing and up-to-date.' Professor Guy Julier, Leeds Metropolitan University |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Beyond the Mirror Susanne von Falkenhausen, 2020-07-07 Since the late 1980s visibility has become a currency of social recognition, and a political issue. It also brought forth a new discipline, visual culture studies, and a hotly contested debate unfolded between art history and visual culture studies over the interpretation of visual culture, whose impact can still be felt today. In this first comparative study Susanne von Falkenhausen reveals the concepts of seeing as scholarly act that underwrite these competing approaches to visuality and society, along with the agendas of identity politics that motivate them. In close readings of key texts spanning from the early 20th century to the present the author crosses expertly between American, German, and British versions of art history, cultural studies, aesthetics, and film studies. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Amazing Women of the Middle East Tarnowska Wafa', 2020-09-01 A superb collection of stories about incredible women from the Middle East Discover Sheherazade, the famous storyteller, dive into the musical world of the beautiful singer Fairuz and meet Amal Clooney, an outstanding international lawyer. Feel inspired by twenty-five amazing women from the Middle East, who have created a legacy through strength of vision, leadership, courage, and determination. Written by award-winning author and trailblazer, Wafa' Tarnowska, this stunning collection of life stories is illustrated by a team of internationally recognized artists. This book is an absolute must-have! This book features: • Scheherazade, Persia, narrator • Nefertiti, Ancient Egypt, 1370 BCE, Queen of Egypt • Queen of Sheba, 1050 BCE, modern-day Ethiopia • Semiramis, ancient Iraq, 811 BCE, Queen of Babylon • Cleopatra VII, Egypt, 69 BCE, last queen of Egypt • Zenobia, Syria, 240 CE, Queen of Palmyra • Theodora, 497 CE, Empress of Byzantium • Rabiya al Adawiyya, Iraq, 714, poet • Shajarat al Durr, Egypt, early 13th Century, Sultana of Egypt • Hurrem Sultan, Ukraine, 1502, Sultana of Ottoman Empire • May Ziadeh, Nazareth, Palestine, 1886, writer • Nazik el Abid, Syria, 1887, activist • Anbara Salam al Khalidi, Lebanon, 1897, activist and feminist • Saloua Raouda Choucair, Lebanon, 1916, painter • Fairuz, Lebanon, 1933, singer • Zaha Hadid, Iraq, 1950, architect • Anousheh Ansari, Iran/USA, 1966, astronaut • Somayya Jabarti, Saudi Arabia, 1970, editor-in-chief • Nadine Labaki, Lebanon, 1974, film maker and actress • Amal Clooney, Lebanon/British, 1978, lawyer • Manahel Thabet, Yemen, 1981, economist and mathematician • Maha Al Baluchi, Oman, pilot • Nadia Murad, Iraq, 1993, rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner • Zahra Lari, UAE, 1995, ice skater • Azza Fahmy, Egypt, jewellery designer |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Men for Men Pierre Borhan, 2007 As soon as the invention of photography made it possible to be photographed with one's loved one, early daguerreotypes - small, unique images housed in their cases - were made as tokens of enduring affection or intimacy. Male couples were no exception. Under strict Victorian moral conventions photographs of the male nude were reserved strictly for academic study by artists. It was not until the early twentieth-century that the first openly homosexual photographers were able to explore the overtly erotic, and this they did by wrapping their subjects in historical reference by evoking images of ancient Greece or Pre-Raphaelite symbolism. After Alfred Kinsey's revelations of male sexuality, published in 1948, an enormous photographic market emerged for pictures of the muscular male physique. Homoeroticism had entered the mainstream photographic language. In this ground-breaking book organised by Gilles Mora with a substantial text by Pierre Bohran, the whole history of the genre is charted from its clandestine origins to its open glorification, including the work of photographic masters such as Brassai and August Sander, as well as the notorious underground excursions of Robert Mapplethorpe. We can follow how a homosexual view has now shaped the new iconography of fashion and the public male image |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Becoming Carol Mavor, 2014-06-09 |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: The Story Paradox Jonathan Gottschall, 2021-11-23 Storytelling, a tradition that built human civilization, may soon destroy it Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it. In The Story Paradox, Gottschall explores how a broad consortium of psychologists, communications specialists, neuroscientists, and literary quants are using the scientific method to study how stories affect our brains. The results challenge the idea that storytelling is an obvious force for good in human life. Yes, storytelling can bind groups together, but it is also the main force dragging people apart. And it’s the best method we’ve ever devised for manipulating each other by circumventing rational thought. Behind all civilization’s greatest ills—environmental destruction, runaway demagogues, warfare—you will always find the same master factor: a mind-disordering story. Gottschall argues that societies succeed or fail depending on how they manage these tensions. And it has only become harder, as new technologies that amplify the effects of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, and fake news make separating fact from fiction nearly impossible. With clarity and conviction, Gottschall reveals why our biggest asset has become our greatest threat, and what, if anything, can be done. It is a call to stop asking, “How we can change the world through stories?” and start asking, “How can we save the world from stories?” |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible John Berger, 2020-09-24 |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways Cyril Lionel Robert James, 1985 |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Trade of the Tricks Graham Jones, 2011-09-14 This book looks inside the secretive subculture of modern magicians. Entering the flourishing Paris magic scene as an apprentice, the author gives a firsthand account of how magicians learn to perform their deceptions. He follows the day-to-day lives of some of France's most renowned performers, revealing not only how secrets are created and shared, but also how they are stolen and destroyed. |
| nicholas mirzoeff how to see the world: Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene (Critical Climate Change) Joanna Zylinska, 2014-09-17 Life typically becomes an object of reflection when it is seen to be under threat. In particular, humans have a tendency to engage in thinking about life (instead of just continuing to live it) when being confronted with the prospect of death: be it the death of individuals due to illness, accident or old age; the death of whole ethnic or national groups in wars and other forms of armed conflict; but also of whole populations, be they human or nonhuman. Even though Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene is first and foremost concerned with life--understood as both a biological and social phenomenon--it is the narrative about the impending death of the human population (i.e., about the extinction of the human species), that provides a context for its argument. Anthropocene names a geo-historical period in which humans are said to have become the biggest threat to life on earth. However, rather than as a scientific descriptor, the term serves here primarily as an ethical injunction to think critically about human and nonhuman agency in the universe. Restrained in tone yet ambitious in scope, the book takes some steps towards outlining a minimal ethics thought on a universal scale. The task of such minimal ethics is to consider how humans can assume responsibility for various occurrences in the universe, across different scales, and how they can respond to the tangled mesh of connections and relations unfolding in it. Its goal is not so much to tell us how to live but rather to allow us to rethink life and what we can do with it, in whatever time we have left. The book embraces a speculative mode of thinking that is more akin to the artist's method; it also includes a photographic project by the author.--Publisher's description. |
Nicholas - Wikipedia
Nicholas is a male name, the Anglophone version of an ancient Greek name in use since antiquity, and cognate with the modern Greek Νικόλαος, Nikolaos. It originally derived …
Nicholas and Co
Since 1939, Nicholas and Company has supplied restaurants, fed families, and supported employees in the Greek tradition of Philotimo. We have built our foundation …
Nicholas: Name Meaning, Origin, Popularity - Parents
Jun 10, 2024 · Nicholas is most often used as a boy name. Learn more about the meaning, origin, and popularity of the name Nicholas.
Meaning, origin and history of the name Nicholas
Apr 23, 2024 · From the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos) meaning "victory of the people", derived from Greek νίκη (nike) meaning "victory" and λαός (laos) meaning …
Nicholas - Baby Name Meaning, Origin, and Popularity
Jun 8, 2025 · Nicholas is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "people of victory". Nicholas is the 118 ranked male name by popularity.
Nicholas - Wikipedia
Nicholas is a male name, the Anglophone version of an ancient Greek name in use since antiquity, and cognate with the modern Greek Νικόλαος, Nikolaos. It originally derived from a …
Nicholas and Co
Since 1939, Nicholas and Company has supplied restaurants, fed families, and supported employees in the Greek tradition of Philotimo. We have built our foundation on a commitment …
Nicholas: Name Meaning, Origin, Popularity - Parents
Jun 10, 2024 · Nicholas is most often used as a boy name. Learn more about the meaning, origin, and popularity of the name Nicholas.
Meaning, origin and history of the name Nicholas
Apr 23, 2024 · From the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos) meaning "victory of the people", derived from Greek νίκη (nike) meaning "victory" and λαός (laos) meaning "people". Saint …
Nicholas - Baby Name Meaning, Origin, and Popularity
Jun 8, 2025 · Nicholas is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "people of victory". Nicholas is the 118 ranked male name by popularity.
Nicholas Galitzine Teases His He-Man Physical Transformation for
16 hours ago · Nicholas Galitzine shared a glimpse into his Masters of the Universe character, He-Man, posing with his back to the camera as he shared that filming has wrapped. "It’s been the …
Nicholas: Name Meaning, Origin, & Popularity - FamilyEducation
Mar 19, 2025 · Nicholas is of Greek origin and means "victory of the people." It is a classic name often associated with Saint Nicholas, the inspiration for Santa Claus.
Nicholas Name Meaning: Middle Names, Popularity & Gender
Feb 17, 2025 · The name Nicholas comes from the Greek words Nike and Laos. In Greek, Nike means victory, while “Laos” is the word for people. The overall meaning of Nicholas is thus the …
Nicholas Name Meaning, Origin, History, And Popularity
May 7, 2024 · The name Nicholas became popular due to its association with Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century Christian saint known for his generosity and gift-giving, who later evolved into …
See Nicholas Galitzine's transformation into He-Man in
8 hours ago · Nicholas Galitzine behind the scenes of 'Masters of the Universe' as He-Man. Nicholas Galitzine/Instagram. The photo shows a shadowed Galitzine from behind, showing off …
