The Visual Culture Reader

This book was for a class and although I found it interesting its not something I would buy for personal reading.

Great book used as a text in my Anthropology graduate program. Compilations from many different authors and I still reread it to this day.

I had to order the book for a class so I didn't look too closely, but the quality is very good considering how many second hand sticker it has.

for school

to much babble .

Not worth the money

"The Visual Culture Reader" is a good introduction to some of the issues touched on visual and cultural studies, highlighting the most common areas of scholar work developed in the last decades, which is part of the framing of visual culture as a body of study. The volume is an updated second edition from 2002 after an original edition from 98. While the update is cogent with the date of its publication, some items have not aged terribly well, in particular those regarding digital theorization, new media and changes in communication experienced since the publication. Nevertheless, this is a relatively small part of the book and the rest of the selection, while very diverse in quality and breadth, still offer a solid outlook into some aspects of visual culture theory.However the volume feels less authoritative, or comprehensive in its scope than what it might aim to project, at least not so much in the selected material itself but the gaps in areas, such as contemporary art, urban development, or social equity to name but a few, as they relate to visual culture that do not seem adequately covered. Likewise, the topics selected are ,while somewhat logical, a bit trite and predictable as some of the most recurring topics observed in this area of research. And with some exceptions often rather than sensing that one is faced by a selection of essential samplings of currents of research and thought withing the different topics, one feels to be reading random - if often interesting - research and analysis in those areas but not the pivotal texts that a reader might be expected to offer.But in a way the breadth and nature of this selection, also becomes an asset in actually illustrating recurring patterns, musings, and doubts around the systematic and difficult framing of visual culture.The interplay of "visual culture" alongside or vs. "cultural studies" is not very well resolved in the reader, and while the explorations offered are not discardable for an introduction in the topic, for a far broader perspective, the older and generalistic readers on cultural studies, such as the one edited by Simon During, seem more relevant and less aged. It is not so much that we need a different " Visual Culture Reader" but that this one 7 years after its publication does need an update.

The pages of the book is coming off, binding is too weak. I paid 70+ for this book, wasn't expecting anything like this...check the photo I included.

This is not just an update to the third edition! There are several new contributions in it, but, more important, there are some important texts missing from the previous edition, for example "Videotech" by John Fiske or the text on digital cinema by Lev Manovich! The preview provided by amazon shows the table of content of the second edition, that is not at all reliable!