Table Of Content(continued from front fl ap) SOCIAL SCIENCE / ART $27.99 US
landscapes or an fMRI scan demonstrating neurological
addiction, Mirzoeff helps us to fi nd meaning in what ADVANCE PRAISE FOR H O W T O
MIRZOEFF
we see.
HOW TO SEE THE WORLD E
A powerful and accessible introduction to this new
very two minutes, Americans alone take more
visual culture, How to See the World reveals how images
12/3
photographs than were printed in the entire
shape our lives, how we can harness their power for
“In our fl uid world, we need reminding how strange our visual culture has nineteenth century; every minute, people from
good, and why they matter to us all.
become. Artist John Berger did that job for the 1970s with his classic book Ways S E E T H E around the world upload over 300 hours of 1/20
of Seeing; now Nicholas Mirzoeff teaches us how to ‘read’ an astronaut’s 2012 video to YouTube; and in 2014, we took over one trillion
space-walk selfi e and how to decode military photos smothered with labels HOW photographs. From the funny memes that we send to 1/22
that claim to show weapons we cannot in fact see. . . . This is a dizzying and our friends to the disturbing photographs we see in
delightful book.” —NEW SCIENTIST, Best Reads from 2015 the news, we are consuming and producing images
TO
in quantities and ways that could never have been
W O R L D
anticipated. In the process, we are creating a new
“In a wide-ranging exploration of our new visual landscapes, Nicholas Mirzoeff
SEE
worldview powered by changing demographics—one
shows us how to think about what we see, from selfi es to self-documenting
where the majority of people are young, urban, and
social movements.” —CLAY SHIRKY, author of Here Comes Everybody
TTHHEE globally connected.
In How to See the World, visual culture expert
“Magisterial in scope and perspicuous in style, this book is full of revelations
Nicholas Mirzoeff offers a sweeping look at history’s
for both specialists and general readers about the way we live now, and the new WWOORRLLDD
most famous images—from Velázquez’s Las Meninas
ways that we look at things.” —W. J. T. MITCHELL, professor of English
L to the iconic “Blue Marble”—to contextualize and
T
M and art history, University of Chicago, and author of What Do Pictures Want?
© make sense of today’s visual world. Drawing on art
NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF history, sociology, semiotics, and everyday experience,
is a professor of
5-5/8 x 8-1/2
“Deploying a blend of semiotics, sociology, and art history, Mirzoeff shows us he teaches us how to close read everything from
media, culture, and communication at New York
S: 1-3/16
how to interpret everything from old masters to selfi es, from Rashomon to a astronaut selfi es to Impressionist self-portraits, from
University and is deputy director of the International B: 15/16
map of the Mississippi. . . . He persuasively makes the case that visual culture is Hitchcock fi lms to videos taken by drones. Mirzoeff
Association for Visual Culture. His writing has been Basic-HC
changing rapidly, thanks to the advent of the internet.” —INDEPENDENT (UK) takes us on a journey through visual revolutions in the
published in the Guardian, Time, and the New Republic. Color: 4C
arts and sciences, from new mapping techniques in
He lives in New York City.
the seventeenth century to new painting styles in the
“This book is a gem—clear, astute, and astonishingly insightful. Read this book Finish: soft touch w/
eighteenth and the creation of fi lm, photography, and
and the fi eld of visual culture will be yours.” —MARITA STURKEN, coauthor of AN INTRODUCTION TO IMAGES, interactive illsuion on
x-rays in the nineteenth century. In today’s networked
Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture title, subtitle and author
FROM SELF-PORTRAITS TO SELFIES, world, mobile technology and social media enable us to
name on front cover and
exercise “visual activism”—the practice of producing
$27.99 US spine
MAPS TO MOVIES, AND MORE
and circulating images to drive political and social
ISBN 978-0-465-09600-8
52799
change. Whether we are looking at pictures showing
Jacket design by Nicole Caputo A Member of the Perseus Books Group
NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF the effects of climate change on natural and urban
Jacket image: “The Eyes of Gutete Emerita,” www.basicbooks.com
1996 © Alfredo Jaar 9 780465 096008 (continued on back fl ap)
PRAISE FOR HOW TO SEE THE WORLD
“Traveling to the moon and back, across continents and between eras,
Mirzoeff nimbly and effectively narrates the visual regimes that regu-
late what we see, how we see, and what remains completely hidden from
view. Indispensable reading for the twenty-first century.”
—Jack Halberstam, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender
Studies, and Comparative Literature, University of Southern
California and author of The Queer Art of Failure
“This book will transform the way you see the world—and how you
want to change it. Eloquently written, it offers new insights on every-
thing from selfies as a new global art form to impressionist art as evi-
dence of global climate change. It is simply brilliant.”
—Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor and Chair,
Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
“Nicholas Mirzoeff connects images and practices of looking to polit-
ical struggles, up to and including the survival of the planet. In clear,
powerful prose, Mirzoeff shows how visuality is at the very center of
struggles for social justice, at moments of both domination and resis-
tance. An essential introduction for anyone who wants to understand
visuality today.”
—Jonathan Sterne, James McGill Professor in Culture and Technology,
McGill University and author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format
“A lucid and accessible introduction to how images shape our lives and
effect change, political and social . . . [How to See the World] offers
numerous insights into ‘reading’ the significance of images in the world
today and is filled with intriguing, insightful nuggets. A challenging
and provocative inquiry into how we see the world.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Beautifully written, with a broad sweep of examples that speak to the
power of images and encourage us to see and think in new ways, How to
See the World is the go-to book for scholars and students in fields rang-
ing from political science and anthropology to art history.”
—Suzanne Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Chair of Fine Arts and of
African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Also by Nicholas Mirzoeff:
An Introduction to Visual Culture
The Visual Culture Reader
The Right to Look
HOW TO SEE
THE WORLD
An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits
to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More
NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF
A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
NEW YORK
Copyright © 2016 by Nicholas Mirzoeff.
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
First published in the United Kingdom by Pelican Books,
an imprint of Penguin Books. Penguin Books is part of the
Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses
can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No
part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact
Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107.
Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts
for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions,
and other organizations. For more information, please contact the
Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300
Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800)
810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].
Designed by Jack Lenzo
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015956107
ISBN: 978-0-465-09600-8 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-465-09601-5 (e-book)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Kathleen, as ever
CONTENTS
Introduction How to See the World 1
Chapter 1 How to See Yourself 29
Chapter 2 How We Think About Seeing 71
Chapter 3 The World of War 97
Chapter 4 The World on Screen 125
Chapter 5 World Cities, City Worlds 159
Chapter 6 The Changing World 209
Chapter 7 Changing the World 249
Afterword Visual Activism 283
Further Reading 295
Acknowledgments 311
List of Illustrations 313
Notes 321
Index 327
vii
iNTRODUCTiON
HOW TO SEE THE WORLD
Figure 1. NASA, Blue Marble
in 1972, the astronaut Jack Schmitt took a picture of Earth from
the Apollo 17 spacecraft, which is now believed to be the
1
