What is Visual Culture?

Visual Culture is the study of a culture that relies on images. Includes all images that are seen, made to be seen, and the way it is understood.

It is a communication through images and pictures, rather than words.

“This is visual culture. It is not just a part of your everyday life, it IS your everyday life.”

Nicholas Mirzoeff

Visual culture is concerned with the production, circulation, and consumption of images and the changing nature of observation.

Bob and Roberta Smith“Hijack Reality” 2008

In other words, what we see everyday, where is comes from, and where it goes

Why Study Visual Culture?

Our daily experiences are now more visual than ever. In the age of the visual screen, your viewpoint is crucial. For most people, life is told through television, film, and the Internet.

Images change based on their context

…For example, Barbara Kruger’s I Shop Therefore I am contrast in meaning based on the way its message is presented.

How images change…

As viewers we automatically READ images, giving little thought to our process.

Decoding Images

We decode this images by interpreting different CLUES that suggest meaning.

These clues may come in the form of the elements (color, shade, contrast…) or in the socio-historical context it is presented.

The background of that society (home life, religion, daily living conditions)

“Big Fat Gypsy Weddings” 2010-

Constructing the Image Images are meant to

be seen in a certain way. This makes the image unnatural.

As a viewer of visual culture, we must see images as a place where meanings can be created and challenged.

“24” 2008

Cultural Perspectives Visual culture

examines the importance of class, gender, and race in our world.

In other words, divides our culture into “rolls”.

Boy vs. Girl Stereotypes Called “gender rolls”

“Tough” Guise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI

Object-ify Women

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlmho_RovY

Race and Cultural Stereotypes

Native American

Irish

African American

Latino

Create an Anti-Stereotype Advertisement

Find Visual Culture

Look through magazines and find a piece of visual culture that shows a harmful stereotype (race, gender, class, ect…).

Find a create way to use scissors, glue, and markers to SPEAK OUT against that harmful stereotype.