This book presents a transcultural and generative introduction to the field of visual studies. Aimed primarily, but not exclusively, for students and scholars in the social sciences, it explores the multiple meanings of images and visual culture in human life.

Divided into three parts, the first section departs from a framework of the look as a medium for understanding imaging practices and offers a critical analysis of the changing ways in which vision has been understood across epochs and cultures and the politics attached. The second section opens with an expanded understanding of images addressing their affective, sensory and performative roles. It then discusses semiotic tensions between the icon and the index and the role of social interaction in the visual field, and ends with an analysis of immersive viewing in a creative juxtaposition between distinct, culturally situated, imaging practices. Building on the previous sections the third part provides a series of applications in specific terrains such as on the significance of faces, on cameras and their environments, the visual culture of death, x-ray imagery and the meaning and role of shadows. Insisting on the role of the look as a medium for studying the visual field this book reminds us of the importance of images not only as representations of the world but also as proper co-travellers and companions of our journeys on the earth.

The book serves as an ideal introductory text for courses across the social sciences by directing the reader’s attention to the generativity and interactivity of imaging practices.