Archaeological and anthropological investigations of depictions seldom extend beyond a single culture or a single geographical location, although there is a powerful factor common to all depictions, the factor of human perception. In this volume an attempt is made to show how this factor affects both creation and recognition of depictions, how, in common with everyday vision of the environment, typical contours are derived and used, not merely to depict individually readily recognisable models, but also how by concatenation they lead to such a splendid figure as Australian Kakadu crocodiles, or by distortion to creation of illusions of pictorial depth, such as is evoked by Leonardo da Vinci’s perspective and by inverted (Byzantine) perspective thought by some to be an aberration. Bartel’s studies show that pictorial depth is often achieved to the artist’s, and many a viewer’s, but not to geometer’s satisfaction by partial distortion, and Chinese masterpieces embody, side by side, ‘normal’ and inverted perspective. The visual process is universally uniform (if it were not, one would not be able to recognise an Altamira bison as a bison) and its foibles can be freely exploited. Its best known exploiter is probably Cezanne. His pictures are admired by many and puzzle many. Strzemiński postulated that they compound distinct lines of sight, thus endorsing primacy of central vision, a concept thought by Gombrich to be of greater import to geometers than to artists.

Photography became a dominant medium in cultural life starting in the late nineteenth century. As it happened, viewers increasingly used their reactions to photographs to comment on and debate public issues as vital as war, national identity, and citizenship. Cara A. Finnegan analyzes a wealth of newspaper and magazine articles, letters to the editor, trial testimony, books, and speeches produced by viewers in response to specific photos they encountered in public. From the portrait of a young Lincoln to images of child laborers and Depression-era hardship, Finnegan treats the photograph as a locus for viewer engagement and constructs a history of photography's viewers that shows how Americans used words about images to participate in the politics of their day. As she shows, encounters with photography helped viewers negotiate the emergent anxieties and crises of U.S. public life through not only persuasion but action, as well.

Develops concept imagery: the ability to create mental representations and integrate them with language. This sensory-cognitive skill underlies language comprehension and higher order thinking for students of all ages.

The world is entering a new technological, social and global age and it is our ability to create meaning which will decide whether we face a bright future or a tragic decline. We are living in an unsustainable state of cultural tension. Stress and depression are becoming more common, we are destroying our environment and while the rich become richer, inequality has spread both domestically and globally. The world's entire democratic system is strained and the only 'meaningful' story left is our role as consumers. We flee to and are trapped by the gilded illusion of happiness that is dictated to us by consumerism. In The World We Create, Tomas Björkman takes readers on a journey through history, economics, sociology, developmental psychology and philosophy, to illuminate where we have come from and how we have reached this breaking point. He offers new perspectives on the world we have created and suggests how we can achieve a more meaningful, sustainable world in the future.

A set of 50 fascinating, disturbing, moving or funny short books published in an appealing new format to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Penguin Modern Classics

Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray? According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheep—who, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living image—and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm. What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike. “A treasury of episodes—generally overlooked by art history and visual studies—that turn on images that ‘walk by themselves’ and exert their own power over the living.”—Norman Bryson, Artforum

The power of images to represent the unseeable: stunning visualizations of science, from the microscopic to the incredibly vast. We live among patterns of delicate beauty and exquisite chaos that our eyes can’t detect; we are surrounded by invisible particles and shifting fields of matter that permeate all of space. Our very cells are intricate molecular machines, and the story of our origins stretches back through an unimaginable amount of time. How can we see the richness of what lies beyond our sensory perception? Scientists have developed visualization tools that can make the invisible visible. This bountifully illustrated book demonstrates the power of images to represent the unseeable, offering stunning visualizations of science that range from the microscopic to the incredibly vast. With more than 200 color images and an engaging text by leading science writer Jack Challoner, Seeing Science explains and illustrates the techniques by which scientists create visualizations of their discoveries. We see the first detection of a black hole as represented by an image from an Xray telescope, get a direct view of DNA through an electron microscope, and much more. Visualizations are also used to make sense of an avalanche of data—concisely presenting information from the 20,000 or so human genes, for example. Scientists represent complex theories in computer models, which take on a curious beauty of their own. And scientists and artists collaborate to create art from science visualizations, with intriguing results.