The Story of Looking

by Mark Cousins

Looking can be an act of empathy or aggression. It can provoke desire or express it. And from the blurry, edgeless world we inhabit as infants to the landscape of screens we grow into, looking can define us.

In The Story of Looking, filmmaker and writer Mark Cousins takes us on a lightning-bright tour - in words and images - through how our looking selves develop over the course of a lifetime, and the ways that looking has changed through the centuries. From great works of art to tourist photographs, from cityscapes to cinema, through science and protest, propaganda and refusals to look, the false mirrors and great visionaries of looking, this book illuminates how we construct as well as receive the things we see.

Brilliant and eclectic, The Story of Looking is a photo album and an art gallery, a road movie and a visual grammar: once you've read it, you'll never see things the same way again.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Film, Art History

432 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2017

About the author

Mark Cousins is an author, film critic, producer, and documentary filmmaker. He is the former director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival and a regular contributor to Prospect, Sight and Sound, and The Times. His latest film is a 14-hour documentary about female filmmakers, Women Make Film.

Reviews

[Martin Raybould · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating guided tour of the visible world that jumps around in time, subject and space but always remains coherent and stimulating.

[Ketan Shah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun and wide ranging journey through our visual history. Highly recommended

[Lennie Wall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book sparked something in me that very few books have done. It's a curious exploration, it's poetic and lyrical, it's a deep meditation. Seekers of beauty will find great value in this book and it leaves the reader reflecting on how they see the world and it will inspire them to see things they haven't seen before. Mark Cousins is brilliant.

[Sabrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible find. Quite brilliant and enjoyable. It changed how I think about the act of looking at the world around me.


“ all the acquisitions brought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise.”
-Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Memory genetically transmitted
Ribonucleic acid modifications
Looking through ancestral eyes


TV
We knew the people in the box could not look at us, but it seems as if they could. If they did not look directly into the lens, the effect was sometimes more intense still we were in their rooms, observing their lives in loves, and they did not even know it. We were flies on the wall, or the invisible man.

[Palina · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is sometimes difficult to read but every page is really worth your time. My respect goes to the author, who has invested his time and knowledge to sum up the history of looking in this book, illustrated with masterpieces.

I also enjoyed reading the thoughts of Mark regarding the historical events and his point of view.

[La Central · Rating 4 out of 5]

"En 2016, Ben Innes, un británico que volaba con Egypt Air, logró convencer al secuestrador del avión en el que viajaba para que posara con él para un selfie. La tecnología se ha apoderado del mundo visible originando nuevas formas de mirar que hubieran sido inimaginables hace décadas. El acto de mirar ha cambiado. Como ilustra el ejemplo, nuestro comportamiento ha variado en consecuencia. Posar para selfies, capturar todo lo que nos rodea, filmar cada cosa que hacemos; en definitiva, la omnipresencia de imágenes, a menudo banales, que invade nuestro día a día se ha convertido en un lugar tan común que rara vez se comenta.

A través de los ojos de artistas, fotógrafos, cineastas y científicos, Mark Cousins revisa la historia de la mirada humana a lo largo de los siglos. Su viaje comienza imaginando de qué modo hubiera visto el mundo un bebé de Homo Sapiens: como un país de sombras. Desde ese momento hasta el presente, detalla cómo construimos y recibimos lo que vemos en relación a los valores y la realidad de cada época. Y cómo, en función de eso, evoluciona nuestro modo de ver. Como ya había apuntado John Berger, la mirada no solo se altera por la experiencia de quien observa, sino también por el contexto social en el que se inscribe la imagen." Raquel Ungo

[Olga Shnip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Эта книга - большой фотоальбом истории человечества. С ее помощью можно найти вдохновение, узнать огромное количество интересной информации (например, о некоторых фактах из науки, культуры и социальной жизни мне не было известно до нее), найти для себя рекомендации по просмотру фильмов, прочтению книг и темы, достойные дальнейшего погружения, но, как и домашнему фотоальбому иногда, на мой взгляд, в ней недостаточно структурированности.

[César Rey · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Si hemos de escoger entre creer que algo ya no existe o que ese algo está oculto tras otra cosa, elegiremos esto último. (...) Lo sobrenatural, los espectros, los aparecidos y la reencarnación están relacionados con esta persistencia de la visión, con esta postimagen. Nuestra mirada está hechizada por lo que una vez vimos».

[JaumeMuntane · Rating 4 out of 5]

La importancia de la mirada y las imágenes en nuestro desarrollo personal a través de un recorrido, subjetivo pero fascinante, de la mano de Mark Cousins. Es ejemplar la fluidez con la que conecta imágenes (fotografías, momentos, pinturas, fotogramas, esculturas...) con la historia, ciencia, cultura....

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

10 stars!

[Kevin Ayres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5.
I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as The Story of Film, which is amazing.
Found it a little bit tedious at times. I think i'll enjoy the film a lot more.

[Mitch Kiman]

💪😲😏🍄

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entretenido, pero simple en su modo de abordar las temáticas. A Cousins le falta bagaje antropológico historico-artistico (Debray, Shinner, Belting, Huberman...) para dotar de trascendencia su discurso.
Nada que ver con la profundidad e ingenio de su Historia del Cine.