A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback. Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator--often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another--he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at France's preeminent Collège de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980. The greater part of Barthes's published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. Volume four, Signs and Images, gathers pieces related to his central concerns--semiotics, visual culture, art, cinema, and photography--and features essays on Marthe Arnould, Lucien Clergue, Daniel Boudinet, Richard Avedon, Bernard Faucon, and many more.

This wide-ranging compendium traces symbolism to its ancient roots, examining a vast variety of symbolic images.

Most people do not stop to realize how many of their fond memories involve advertising signs. Although these neon spectaculars, billboards, and even signs painted directly onto brick walls were created expressly to persuade customers to buy products or patronize businesses, many such signs remained in place for so long that they became beloved landmarks in their own right. For Images of America: Vintage Birmingham Signs, Tim Hollis has scoured the archives of Birminghams former sign companies, as well as other private collections, to compile some of the best remembered or most obscure signs that dotted the urban and suburban landscape. Here readers will again see the Buffalo Rock bottle pouring its ginger ale into a glass, the Golden Flake clown smiling down at passersby, the Barbers milk clock at the Five Points South intersection, and many more. Through these vintage photographs, readers can once again visit such once-thriving destinations as Eastwood Mall, Burger in a Hurry, and the Kiddieland amusement park.

Discusses the elements of a sign, and looks at pictograms, alphabets, calligraphy, monograms, text type, numerical signs, symbols, and trademarks.

During the 1950s, the Cinchett Neon Sign Company came to be Tampa's best-known sign maker. When the city planned to build a zoo, the mayor asked Cinchett to design the new sign. Fried chicken king Colonel Sanders had the sign company create all the neon work for his first two Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Central Florida, and soon after, other reputable businesses came calling.

Vivid, clear-sighted images of American vernacular signage and architecture encountered along old US highways showcase the early black-and-white work of the acclaimed photographer Jim Dow The American photographer Jim Dow (b. 1942) is renowned for photographs that depict the built environment--he first gained attention for his panoramic triptychs of baseball stadiums--and for his skill at conveying the "human ingenuity and spirit" that suffuse the spaces. This book is the first to focus on Dow's early black-and-white pictures, featuring more than 60 photographs made between 1967 and 1977, a majority of which have never before been published. Indebted to the work of Walker Evans, a key mentor of Dow's, these photographs depict time-worn signage taken from billboards, diners, gas stations, drive-ins, and other small businesses. While still recognizable as icons of commercial Americana, without their context Dow's signs impart ambiguous messages, often situated between documentation and abstraction. Including a new essay by Dow that reveals his own perspective on the development of the work, Signs suggests how these formative years honed the artist's sensibility and conceptual approach.

1,355 signs, seals, symbols: Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Germanic, Byzantine, Renaissance, Aztec, Hindu, Islamic, Chinese, Japanese, others. Astrological, alchemical, magical, early Christian, masonic, heraldic, crests, goldsmiths' marks, watermarks.

Quilt expert Wahlman introduces readers to a powerful force in African-American quilts: their African-derived meanings, patterns, and iconography. She explores the religious, ritual, philosophical, and aesthetic beliefs that have been retained by descendants of Africans in the New World and demonstrates how these beliefs are represented in their textiles. 150 illustrations.

Demonstrates through illustrations and brief text twenty-nine American Sign Language signs for words such as hello, cry, dog, and love.