How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and MoreEvery two minutes, Americans alone take more photographs than were printed in the entire nineteenth century; every minute, people from around the world upload over 300 hours of video to YouTube; and in 2014, we took over one trillion photographs. From the funny memes that we send to our friends to the disturbing photographs we see in the news, we are consuming and producing images in quantities and ways that could never have been anticipated. In the process, we are producing a new worldview powered by changing demographics -- one where the majority of people are young, urban, and globally connected. In How to See the World, visual culture expert Nicholas Mirzoeff offers a sweeping look at history's most famous images -- from Velezquez's Las Meninas to the iconic "Blue Marble" -- to contextualize and make sense of today's visual world. Drawing on art history, sociology, semiotics, and everyday experience, he teaches us how to close read everything from astronaut selfies to Impressionist self-portraits, from Hitchcock films to videos taken by drones. Mirzoeff takes us on a journey through visual revolutions in the arts and sciences, from new mapping techniques in the seventeenth century to new painting styles in the eighteenth and the creation of film, photography, and x-rays in the nineteenth century. In today's networked world, mobile technology and social media enable us to exercise "visual activism" -- the practice of producing and circulating images to drive political and social change. Whether we are looking at pictures showing the effects of climate change on natural and urban landscapes or an fMRI scan demonstrating neurological addiction, Mirzoeff helps us to find meaning in what we see. A powerful and accessible introduction to this new visual culture, How to See the World reveals how images shape our lives, how we can harness their power for good, and why they matter to us all. |
Contents
How We Think About Seeing | |
The World of | |
World Cities City Worlds | |
The Changing World | |
Changing the World | |
Afterword Visual Activism | |
List of Illustrations | |
Other editions - View all
How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to ... Nicholas Mirzoeff No preview available - 2016 |
How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to ... Nicholas Mirzoeff No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
Adbusters Anthropocene apartheid Art Resource artist audience battlefield became become Berlin birds Blue Marble brain called camera Chapter China cinema claimed classic climate change closed world coal Cold War color created depicted dramatic drone Duchamp everyday experience Facebook Figure film flâneur Ganzeer gender global city Google Earth gorilla graffiti human imagine Internet invisible J. M. W. Turner known L’Absinthe Las Meninas live London look Lumière brothers means metaphor million mirror modern Monet Museum National Nest Stadium nineteenth century nonetheless Occupy Wall Street painting Paris percent performance photograph picture police political regime representation result revolution Rrose Sélavy screen seen selfie selfportrait sense sitin social media South Africa space Tahrir television there’s today’s train transformation Tumblr urban VigéeLebrun visible vision visual culture visual thinking watching woman women worldwide York YouTube