Visual Culture

Visual culture is a philosophical and epistemological stance that acknowledges visuality as central to the constitution of the world. Visuality is the way in which certain ways of seeing the world are created, and how these creations are powerful because they affect “how we see, how we are able, allowed, or made to see” (Foster 1988, ix). Research on visual culture tends to revolve around at least three complex and wide-ranging concepts: representation, meaning, and culture. This complexity makes the as-yet-inchoate discipline diverse in its aims and eclectic in its methods, thus reflecting a radical interdisciplinarity. Visual culture, as a term, refers to both the visual aspects of culture and to visual culture as a scholarly discipline. Visual culture offers profound implications for understanding consumer ...