David Morgan

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005

In his first chapter, Morgan examines different perspectives and debates that surround definitions of the field. He summarizes them in two assertions:
* Visual culture is what images, acts of seeing, and attendant intellectual, emotional, and perceptual sensibilities do to build, maintain, or transform the worlds in which people live.
* The study of visual culture is the analysis and interpretation of images and the ways of seeing (or gazes) that configure the agents, practices, conceptualities, and institutions that put images to work. (p.33)
He elaborates on these assertions in the next couple of chapters that looks theoretically and practically at the role images play and how they function in our cognitive and practical making of religious meaning. Far beyond just the act of seeing or aesthetics of the image, visual culture explores the range of practices that surround images: the cultures of their production and transmission, the industries that build themselves around them, he ritual contexts and practices within which they re engaged, and the emotional and theological traditions that are evoked and constructed through their associations and uses. The following chapters elaborate on these theoretical perspectives with a number of in-depth case studies: images and iconoclasm, the use of images in mission, images of the family and images of civil religion.

The chapter I found particularly stimulating was the one that looked at the covenant we form in the process of engaging an image. This is probably old hat to someone who knows the area even cursorily, but it helped me understand processes I hadn't understood before, that have an application I think beyond just images to most forms of mediation. The general principle is that "images work by demanding a prerequisite submission of the viewer, a willful surrendering to belief in the power of the image to work its magic on the viewer." (p.75) This willingness to suspend disbelief and submit to the potential of the medium is a fundamental element in media literacy, learning not just what signifiers signify, but learning to accept the sensory translation that is required in engaging the text. Morgan iterates the various covenants in which we engage in approaching an image, identifying the way in which these covenants also influence the meanings ascribed to images by different people or in different contexts.

Those who know Morgan's other writings (Visual Piety, Protestants and Pictures) appreciate the depth of his analysis and the fluid clarity with which he moves between otherwise complex theory and diverse practice. This text is the same. Because of that it will, I am sure, be extensively used in courses as a valuable tool for theoretical understanding and for bridging the frequently separated areas of media, religion, design and art.

Table of Contents:

Questions and definitions
1. Defining visual cultures
2. Visual practice and the function of images
3. The covenant with images
Images between cultures
4. The violence of seeing: Idolatry and iconoclasm
5. The circulation of images in mission history
The social life of pictures
6. Engendering vision: Absent fathers and women with beards
7. National icons: Bibles, flags, and Jesus in American civil religion
Conclusion

Review by Peter Horsfield