The Image Society

by José van Dijck, Frank van Vree, Kitty Zijlmans

We live in an age in which text is gradually losing ground to the image. People read less and spend ever more time in front of the computer screen or the TV. Events and personal lives are no longer only documented in reports, letters, or diaries, but also with digital cameras and video recorders. The fast-moving images of MTV continue to exercise increasing influence on youth culture. Images obviously have a certain directness, accessibility, and attraction that puts them at an advantage in the competition to grab the audience's attention. To stimulate an exchange of ideas about this contemporary situation, six writers, scholars, and experts were invited to devote an essay to the problems and potential of visual culture, examining questions of digitization, reproduction and authorship, the influence on our historic consciousness, and the impact on expressive traditions. Published in conjunction with The National Institute for Photography in the Netherlands.

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2003

About the author

José van Dijck is a professor of Comparative Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Reviews

[Anda · Rating 2 out of 5]

TBH, it's hard to rate this book because I read it a decade after its publication. The essays seemed shallowly researched and everything felt obvious ... but maybe that wasn't true ten years ago. Art essays typically resonate more in the time they are published.