visual culture

W. J. T. Mitchell’s “What Do Pictures Want?”: The Lives, Loves, and Agency of Images

W. J. T. Mitchell's What Do Pictures Want? (2005) follows Picture Theory by investigating the "agency" and social life of images. This analysis breaks down its 4 core concepts: 1) The methodological hypothesis of asking what pictures "want" to reveal power; 2) The "idol/totem/fetish" trio to analyze power and "iconoclasm"; 3) The interplay between the material "picture" and the fluid "image"; 4) The concept of "voicing" (who speaks for the image).

2025.11.05

kiji

W. J. T. Mitchell’s “Picture Theory”: A Toolkit for Image-Text Criticism

W. J. T. Mitchell's Picture Theory (1994) is a foundational text for visual culture studies. This analysis breaks down its 4 core concepts: 1) The "Pictorial Turn," which positions the image as a central problem, not an illustration; 2) The "image/text" trio (image/text, image-text, imagetext) for analyzing relations; 3) The distinction between the material "picture" and the virtual "image"; 4) The "metapicture" as a site of self-referential theory.

2025.11.05

kiji

The Archaeology of Vision: Jonathan Crary’s “Techniques of the Observer”

Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer is an archaeology of modern vision. This analysis breaks down its 4 core concepts: 1) The shift from the "camera obscura" model to an "embodied," subjective vision (e.g., afterimages); 2) How 19th-c. devices (stereoscope, zoetrope) trained the viewer's "attention" and "distraction"; 3) The disciplining of attention as a form of manageable labor; 4) How the modern gaze internalized the logic of commodity circulation. A foundational text for visual culture and the "attention economy."

2025.11.05

kiji

John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”: An Exercise in Demystifying Visual Power

John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a classic exercise in demystifying visual culture. This article analyzes its four core concepts: 1) How reproduction and context change an image's meaning; 2) The tradition of oil painting as an "aesthetic of ownership" and the "Nude" as a body organized by the male gaze; 3) How advertising functions as modern oil painting by manufacturing "envy"; 4) The demystification of art to reclaim viewer agency. It also explores the book's long-term impact on visual culture and feminist criticism.

2025.11.05

kiji