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Seeing America: Women Photographers Between the Wars
by Melissa A. McEuen“This vibrant and penetrating study. . . . opens a window on American culture between the world wars.” —Publishers WeeklySeeing America explores the camera work of five women who directed their visions toward influencing social policy and cultural theory. Taken together, they visually articulated the essential ideas occupying the American consciousness in the years between the world wars.Melissa McEuen examines the work of Doris Ulmann, who made portraits of celebrated artists in urban areas and lesser-known craftspeople in rural places; Dorothea Lange, who magnified human dignity in the midst of poverty and unemployment; Marion Post Wolcott, a steadfast believer in collective strength as the antidote to social ills and the best defense against future challenges; Margaret Bourke-White, who applied avant-garde advertising techniques in her exploration of the human condition; and Berenice Abbott, a devoted observer of the continuous motion and chaotic energy that characterized the modern cityscape.Combining feminist biography with analysis of visual texts, McEuen considers the various prisms though which each woman saw and revealed America.Winner of the 1999 Emily Toth Award for the best feminist study of popular culture given by the Women’s Caucus of the Popular Culture Association.“A rich resource for anyone interested in the history of photography, women’s history, and American history in general.” —Bloomsbury Review“A valiant, well-researched effort to bridge the history of visual culture with American social and political history.” —Journal of American History“The best books always leave their audience wanting more. That is certainly true of this gem of a work.” —Library Journal (starred review).
Seeing Baya: Portrait of an Algerian Artist in Paris (Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Collection)
by Alice KaplanThe first biography of the Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine, celebrated in mid-twentieth-century Paris, her life shrouded in myth. On a flower farm in colonial Algeria, a servant and field worker known as Baya escaped the drudgery of her labor by coloring the skirts in fashion magazines. Three years later, in November 1947, her paintings and fanciful clay beasts were featured in a solo show in Paris. She wasn’t yet sixteen years old. In this first biography of Baya, Alice Kaplan tells the story of a young woman seemingly trapped in subsistence who becomes a sensation in the French capital, then mysteriously fades from the history of modern art—only to reemerge after independence as an icon of Algerian artistic heritage. The toast of Paris for the 1947 season, Baya inspired colonialist fantasies about her “primitive” genius as well as genuine appreciation. She was featured in newspapers, on the radio, and in a newsreel; her art was praised by Breton and Camus, Marchand and Braque. At the dawn of Algerian liberation, her appearance in Paris was used to stage the illusion of French-Algerian friendship, while horrific French massacres in Algeria were still fresh in memory. Kaplan uncovers the central figures in Baya’s life and the role they played in her artistic career. Among the most poignant was Marguerite Caminat-McEwen-Benhoura, who took Baya from her sister’s farm to Algiers, where Baya worked as Marguerite’s maid and was given paint and brushes. A complex and endearing character, Marguerite—and her Pygmalion ambitions—was decisive in shaping Baya’s destiny. Kaplan also looks closely at Baya’s earliest paintings with an eye to their themes, their palette and design, and their enduring influence. In vivid prose that brings Baya’s story into the present, Kaplan’s book, the fruit of scrupulous research in Algiers, Blida, Paris, and Provence, allows us to see in a whole new light the beloved artist who signed her paintings simply “Baya.”
Seeing Beyond Sight: Photographs by Blind Teenagers
by Tony DeifellFor five years Tony Deifell taught teenagers to take photographs. His students were blind. Unusual as the idea may seem at first, putting cameras in the hands of visually impaired children proved to be extremely fruitful both for the photographers, who found an astonishing new means of self-expression, and for the viewers of their images, for whom this is an entirely new kind of dreamlike and intuitive creation. Even before you know that these pictures were taken by blind teenagers, they are striking in their use of light and composition, and haunting in their chiaroscuro intensity. To learn more, visit http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/
Seeing Central Park: The Official Guide
by Sara Cedar MillerAn authoritative visual survey of New York City’s Central Park, with new photography and updated text.For more than 160 years, Central Park has been the centerpiece of New York City, with more than forty-two million visits each year. In Seeing Central Park, Sara Cedar Miller takes readers through America’s most popular and celebrated park, where natural and manmade features are interwoven into a spectacular work of art. Combining superb research and writing with breathtaking photographs, Seeing Central Park is not only a guide through every significant design feature but also a gorgeous gift book.Since the book was first published in 2009, the Conservancy has completed a number of renovations and opened new areas of the park, including the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, Rhododendron Mile, and Dene Slope. This updated edition features these landmarks alongside revised entries and new photography throughout. With its pastoral and picturesque landscapes, roads and paths, bridges, buildings, structures, and sculpture, Central Park is a living museum of superb Victorian decorative arts and landscape design. From the Pond to Harlem Meer, it’s all covered in Seeing Central Park.
Seeing Color in Classical Art: Theory, Practice, and Reception, from Antiquity to the Present
by Jennifer M. StagerThe remains of ancient Mediterranean art and architecture that have survived over the centuries present the modern viewer with images of white, the color of the stone often used for sculpture. Antiquarian debates and recent scholarship, however, have challenged this aspect of ancient sculpture. There is now a consensus that sculpture produced in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as art objects in other media, were, in fact, polychromatic. Color has consequently become one of the most important issues in the study of classical art. Jennifer Stager's landmark book makes a vital contribution to this discussion. Analyzing the dyes, pigments, stones, earth, and metals found in ancient art works, along with the language that writers in antiquity used to describe color, she examines the traces of color in a variety of media. Stager also discusses the significance of a reception history that has emphasized whiteness, revealing how ancient artistic practice and ancient philosophies of color significantly influenced one another.
Seeing Comics through Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Form (Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels)
by Ian Horton Maggie GrayThis book explores what the methodologies of Art History might offer Comics Studies, in terms of addressing overlooked aspects of aesthetics, form, materiality, perception and visual style. As well as considering what Art History proposes of comic scholarship, including the questioning of some of its deep-rooted categories and procedures, it also appraises what comics and Comics Studies afford and ask of Art History. This book draws together the work of international scholars applying art-historical methodologies to the study of a range of comic strips, books, cartoons, graphic novels and manga, who, as well as being researchers, are also educators, artists, designers, curators, producers, librarians, editors, and writers, with some undertaking practice-based research. Many are trained art historians, but others come from, have migrated into, or straddle other disciplines, such as Comparative Literature, American Literature, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, and a range of subjects within Art & Design practice.
Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts
by Amelia JonesSeeing Differently offers a history and theory of ideas about identity in relation to visual arts discourses and practices in Euro-American culture, from early modern beliefs that art is an expression of an individual, the painted image a "world picture" expressing a comprehensive and coherent point of view, to the rise of identity politics after WWII in the art world and beyond. The book is both a history of these ideas (for example, tracing the dominance of a binary model of self and other from Hegel through classic 1970s identity politics) and a political response to the common claim in art and popular political discourse that we are "beyond" or "post-" identity. In challenging this latter claim, Seeing Differently critically examines how and why we "identify" works of art with an expressive subjectivity, noting the impossibility of claiming we are "post-identity" given the persistence of beliefs in art discourse and broader visual culture about who the subject "is," and offers a new theory of how to think this kind of identification in a more thoughtful and self-reflexive way. Ultimately, Seeing Differently offers a mode of thinking identification as a "queer feminist durational" process that can never be fully resolved but must be accounted for in thinking about art and visual culture. Queer feminist durationality is a mode of relational interpretation that affects both "art" and "interpreter," potentially making us more aware of how we evaluate and give value to art and other kinds of visual culture.
Seeing Education on Film: A Conceptual Aesthetics
by Alexis GibbsThis book argues that certain films have more to offer by way of conceptualising education than textual scholarship. Drawing on the work of the later Wittgenstein, it suggests that a shift in our philosophical focus from knowing to seeing can allow for ordinary educational phenomena (teachers, schools, children) to be appreciated anew. The book argues that cinema is the medium best placed to draw attention to this revaluation of the everyday, and particular films are presented as offering unique insights into the aesthetic nature of education as a concept. The book will be of primary interest to educators and educationalists alike, but its interdisciplinary nature should also appeal to those in the fields of film study, philosophy, and aesthetics.
Seeing Ghosts
by Karen EngleStarting from the tremendous fascination with images of 9/11, Karen Engle asks what, in the context of a national trauma, makes an image appropriate or scandalous, exploring how diverse visual media have been mobilized in political projects of identification and personal narratives of empathy. Focusing on themes of memory, mourning, and history, Engle examines sculptural, photographic, and new media responses to the 9/11 attacks in both contemporary and historical contexts, considers the public's reaction to these visual productions, and suggests that earlier presentations of America at war play a pivotal role in the representations of 9/11 in both official and popular media.
Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images
by Finis DunawayAmerican environmentalism is defined by its icons: the "Crying Indian,” who shed a tear in response to litter and pollution; the cooling towers of Three Mile Island, site of a notorious nuclear accident; the sorrowful spectacle of oil-soaked wildlife following the ExxonValdez spill; and, more recently, Al Gore delivering his global warming slide show in An Inconvenient Truth. These images, and others like them, have helped make environmental consciousness central to American public culture. Yet most historical accounts ignore the crucial role images have played in the making of popular environmentalism, let alone the ways that they have obscured other environmental truths. Finis Dunaway closes that gap with Seeing Green. Considering a wide array of images--including pictures in popular magazines, television news, advertisements, cartoons, films, and political posters--he shows how popular environmentalism has been entwined with mass media spectacles of crisis. Beginning with radioactive fallout and pesticides during the 1960s and ending with global warming today, he focuses on key moments in which media images provoked environmental anxiety but also prescribed limited forms of action. Moreover, he shows how the media have blamed individual consumers for environmental degradation and thus deflected attention from corporate and government responsibility. Ultimately, Dunaway argues, iconic images have impeded efforts to realize--or even imagine--sustainable visions of the future. Generously illustrated, this innovative book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of environmentalism or in the power of the media to shape our politics and public life.
Seeing Human Rights: Video Activism as a Proxy Profession (Information Policy)
by Sandra RistovskaAs video becomes an important tool to expose injustice, an examination of how human rights organizations are seeking to professionalize video activism.Visual imagery is at the heart of humanitarian and human rights activism, and video has become a key tool in these efforts. The Saffron Revolution in Myanmar, the Green Movement in Iran, and Black Lives Matter in the United States have all used video to expose injustice. In Seeing Human Rights, Sandra Ristovska examines how human rights organizations are seeking to professionalize video activism through video production, verification standards, and training. The result, she argues, is a proxy profession that uses human rights videos to tap into journalism, the law, and political advocacy.Ristovska explains that this proxy profession retains some tactical flexibility in its use of video while giving up on the more radical potential and imaginative scope of video activism as a cultural practice. Drawing on detailed analysis of legal cases and videos as well as extensive interviews with staff members of such organizations as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, WITNESS, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the International Criminal Court (ICC), Ristovska considers the unique affordances of video and examines the unfolding relationships among journalists, human rights organizations, activists, and citizens in global crisis reporting. She offers a case study of the visual turn in the law; describes advocacy and marketing strategies; and argues that the transformation of video activism into a proxy profession privileges institutional and legal spaces over broader constituencies for public good.
Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties
by Peter BiskindSeeing is Believing is a provocative, shrewd, witty look at the Hollywood fifties movies we all love-or love to hate-and the thousand subtle ways they reflect the political tensions of the decade. Peter Biskind, former executive editor of Premiere, is one of our most astute cultural critics. Here he concentrates on the films everybody saw but nobody really looked at--classics like Giant, On the Waterfront, Rebel Without a Cause, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers--and shows us how movies that appear to be politically innocent in fact carry an ideological burden. As we see organization men and rugged individualists, housewives and career women, cops and doctors, teen angels and teenage werewolves fight it out across the screen from suburbia to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, we understand that we have been watching one long dispute about how to be a man, a woman, an American--the conflicts of the period in action. A work of brilliant analysis and meticulous conception, Seeing Is Believing offers fascinating insights into how to read films of any era.
Seeing Is Believing: The Revelation of God Through Film (Studies in Theology and the Arts Series)
by Richard Vance GoodwinHow might film reveal God?In its most basic form, film is a series of images displayed over time. Of course, film has developed greatly since the Lumière brothers by adding components such as sound, special effects, digital recording, and more to create an increasingly complex artistic medium. Historically, film studies has often focused on the narrative aspect of film as it seeks to tell a story. More recent studies, however, have turned attention to other elements of film, such as the musical score. Yet, film remains, in a sense, a series of images.In this study, the latest in IVP Academic's Studies in Theology and the Arts (STA) series, theologian Richard Goodwin considers how the images that constitute film might be a conduit of God's revelation. By considering works by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Bresson, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, and more, Goodwin argues that by inviting emotional responses, film images can be a medium of divine revelation.Blessed are those who have seen God... through film.
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Expanded Edition
by Lawrence WechslerWhen this book first appeared in 1982, it introduced readers to Robert Irwin, the Los Angeles artist "who one day got hooked on his own curiosity and decided to live it." Now expanded to include six additional chapters and twenty-four pages of color plates, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees chronicles three decades of conversation between Lawrence Weschler and light and space master Irwin. It surveys many of Irwin's site-conditioned projects—in particular the Central Gardens at the Getty Museum (the subject of an epic battle with the site's principal architect, Richard Meier) and the design that transformed an abandoned Hudson Valley factory into Dia's new Beacon campus—enhancing what many had already considered the best book ever on an artist.
Seeing Orange (Orca Echoes)
by Sara CassidySeven-year-old Leland has trouble writing, but he loves drawing. Leland so dislikes his teacher that he conjures up Delilah, an imaginary seeing-eye dog to help him into class each day. When a neighborhood painter recognizes Leland's gifts as an artist, Leland grows more confident about the world as he uniquely sees it. And when his family's cat goes missing, it is Leland's keen observation skills that lead to finding him. Leland's newfound confidence helps him both confront and sympathize with his teacher, who only wishes Leland could be a bit more focused. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.
Seeing Politics: Film, Visual Method, and International Relations
by Sophie HarmanPushing the boundaries of how we do research, how we communicate research, and what counts as scholarship in world politics.
Seeing Politics: Film, Visual Method, and International Relations
by Sophie HarmanVisual politics and the aesthetic turn in international relations have emphasized the power of the image in world politics. Postcolonial and decolonial feminist theory shows the urgent need to rethink research and teaching methods. What happens when these concepts converge and such thinking is translated into practice? Engaging with a broad range of topics – the politics of everyday life, health, HIV/AIDS, Africa, post-colonialism, gender/feminist theory, visuality, film, and method – in Seeing Politics Sophie Harman looks at scholars who are pushing the boundaries of how they do research, how they communicate their research to a broader audience, and what counts as scholarship in world politics. Through a detailed exploration of the political process of film production, from inception and co-production to distribution and exhibition, she addresses the tricky transnational relationships, government gatekeeping, and global hierarchies of film governance that control and marginalize the stories and people we see. Fundamentally, Seeing Politics is about how narrative feature film challenges and advances the discipline of international relations, revealing aspects of politics that would otherwise remain unseen and unaddressed. Film is not just a way of communicating research. It is a method that produces research and visibility, advancing research practice and knowledge in international relations. Innovative and compelling, this book is about the politics of seeing, being seen, and what stops us from seeing.
Seeing Power
by Nato ThompsonIn our chaotic world of co-opted imagery, does art still have power?A fog of images and information permeates the world nowadays: from advertising, television, radio, and film to the glut produced by the new economy and the rise of social media . . . where even our friends suddenly seem to be selling us the ultimate product: themselves. Here, Nato Thompson--one of the country's most celebrated young curators and critics--investigates what this deluge means for those dedicated to socially engaged art and activism. How can anyone find a voice and make change in a world flooded with such pseudo-art? How are we supposed to discern what's true in the product emanating from the ceaseless machine of consumer capitalism, a machine that appropriates from art history, and now from the methods of grassroots political organizing and even social networking? Thompson's invigorating answers to those questions highlights the work of some of the most innovative and interesting artists and activists working today, as well as institutions that empower their communities to see power and reimagine it. From cooperative housing to anarchist infoshops to alternative art venues, Seeing Power reveals ways that art today can and does inspire innovation and dramatic transformation . . . perhaps as never before.From the Hardcover edition.
Seeing Red: Nintendo's Virtual Boy (Platform Studies)
by Jose P. Zagal Benj EdwardsThe curious history, technology, and technocultural context of Nintendo&’s short-lived stereoscopic gaming console, the Virtual Boy.With glowing red stereoscopic 3D graphics, the Virtual Boy cast a prophetic hue: Shortly after its release in 1995, Nintendo's balance sheet for the product was "in the red" as well. Of all the innovative long shots the game industry has witnessed over the years, perhaps the most infamous and least understood was the Virtual Boy. Why the Virtual Boy failed, and where it succeeded, are questions that video game experts José Zagal and Benj Edwards explore in Seeing Red, but even more interesting to the authors is what the platform actually was: what it promised, how it worked, and where it fit into the story of gaming.Nintendo released the Virtual Boy as a standalone table-top device in 1995—and quickly discontinued it after lackluster sales and a lukewarm critical reception. In Seeing Red, Zagal and Edwards examine the device's technical capabilities, its games, and the cultural context in the US in the 1990s when Nintendo developed and released the unusual console. The Virtual Boy, in their account, built upon and extended an often-forgotten historical tradition of immersive layered dioramas going back 100 years that was largely unexplored in video games at the time. The authors also show how the platform's library of games conveyed a distinct visual aesthetic style that has not been significantly explored since the Virtual Boy's release, having been superseded by polygonal 3D graphics. The platform's meaning, they contend, lies as much in its design and technical capabilities and affordances as it does in an audience's perception of those capabilities. Offering rare insight into how we think about video game platforms, Seeing Red illustrates where perception and context come, quite literally, into play.
Seeing Sarah Bernhardt: Performance and Silent Film
by Victoria DuckettThe most famous stage actress of the nineteenth century, Sarah Bernhardt enjoyed a surprising renaissance when the 1912 multi-reel film Queen Elizabeth vaulted her to international acclaim. The triumph capped her already lengthy involvement with cinema while enabling the indefatigable actress to reinvent herself in an era of technological and generational change. Placing Bernhardt at the center of the industry's first two decades, Victoria Duckett challenges the perception of her as an anachronism unable to appreciate film's qualities. Instead, cinema's substitution of translated title cards for her melodic French deciphered Bernhardt for Anglo-American audiences. It also allowed the aging actress to appear in the kinds of longer dramas she could no longer physically sustain onstage. As Duckett shows, Bernhardt contributed far more than star quality. Her theatrical practice on film influenced how the young medium changed the visual and performing arts. Her promoting of experimentation, meanwhile, shaped the ways audiences looked at and understood early cinema. A leading-edge reappraisal of a watershed era, Seeing Sarah Bernhardt tells the story of an icon who bridged two centuries--and changed the very act of watching film.
Seeing Seeds: A Journey into the World of Seedheads, Pods, and Fruit (Seeing Series)
by Robert Llewellyn Teri Dunn Chace“Llewellyn’s images reflect a depth of detail that until now, only the best botanical illustrators could approach.” —The Washington Post A centuries-old saying goes, “Great oaks from little acorns grow.” But as this dazzling book reveals, there is much more to a seed than the plant it will someday become: seeds, seedheads, pods, and fruits have their own astounding beauty that rivals, and sometimes even surpasses, the beauty of flowers. Bitter melon seeds resemble a handful of rubies. Poppy pods could be art nouveau salt shakers. And butterfly vine seeds look exactly like those delicate insects captured in mid-flight. Seeds also come with fascinating stories. Jewels of Opar got its name from a fabled city in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan stories. Lotus seeds sent into orbit by Chinese scientists came back to earth mysteriously altered. And fava beans—beloved of foodies—have a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality: they can cause the debilitating condition known as favism in some individuals and at the same time combat the microorganism that causes malaria. In these stunning pages you’ll gain an understanding of how seeds are formed and dispersed, why they look the way they do, and how they fit into the environment. Seeing Seeds will take you to strange and wonderful places. When you return, it’s safe to say that you’ll never look at a seed the same way again.
Seeing Silence
by Mark C. Taylor“To hear silence is to find stillness in the midst of the restlessness that makes creative life possible and the inescapability of death acceptable.” So writes Mark C. Taylor in his latest book, a philosophy of silence for our nervous, chattering age. How do we find silence—and more importantly, how do we understand it—amid the incessant buzz of the networks that enmesh us? Have we forgotten how to listen to each other, to recognize the virtues of modesty and reticence, and to appreciate the resonance of silence? Are we less prepared than ever for the ultimate silence that awaits us all? Taylor wants us to pause long enough to hear what is not said and to attend to what remains unsayable. In his account, our way to hearing silence is, paradoxically, to see it. He explores the many variations of silence by considering the work of leading modern and postmodern visual artists, including Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, James Turrell, and Anish Kapoor. Developing the insights of philosophers, theologians, writers, and composers, Taylor weaves a rich narrative modeled on the Stations of the Cross. His chapter titles suggest our positions toward silence: Without. Before. From. Beyond. Against. Within. Between. Toward. Around. With. In. Recasting Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit and Kierkegaard’s stages on life’s way, Taylor translates the traditional Via Dolorosa into a Nietzschean Via Jubilosa that affirms light in the midst of darkness. Seeing Silence is a thoughtful meditation that invites readers to linger long enough to see silence, and, in this way, perhaps to hear once again the wordless Word that once was named “God.”
Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages
by Robert MillsDuring the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled "sodomitical” or evoked the use of ambiguous phrases such as the "unmentionable vice” or the "sin against nature. ” How, though, did these categories enter the field of vision? How do you know a sodomite when you see one? In Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages, Robert Mills explores the relationship between sodomy and motifs of vision and visibility in medieval culture, on the one hand, and those categories we today call gender and sexuality, on the other. Challenging the view that ideas about sexual and gender dissidence were too confused to congeal into a coherent form in the Middle Ages, Mills demonstrates that sodomy had a rich, multimedia presence in the period--and that a flexible approach to questions of terminology sheds new light on the many forms this presence took. Among the topics that Mills covers are depictions of the practices of sodomites in illuminated Bibles; motifs of gender transformation and sex change as envisioned by medieval artists and commentators on Ovid; sexual relations in religious houses and other enclosed spaces; and the applicability of modern categories such as "transgender,” "butch” and "femme,” or "sexual orientation” to medieval culture. Taking in a multitude of images, texts, and methodologies, this book will be of interest to all scholars, regardless of discipline, who engage with gender and sexuality in their work.
Seeing Symmetry
by Amy TaoJoin us as we go on a journey into the world of symmetry! Learn about the wonders of line symmetry—or reflection—as you create mirror images and watch how rotational symmetry works in this brief peek into this area of geometry.
Seeing Symphonically: Avant-Garde Film, Urban Planning, and the Utopian Image of New York (SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema)
by Erica SteinCan the cinema imagine a different way of developing, using, and living in the city? Is it possible to do so using images of the extant city? Seeing Symphonically shows how a group of independent experimental, documentary, and feature films made in and about late modern New York City did just this. Between 1939 and 1964, as the city was being utterly remade by a combination of urban renewal projects, suburbanization, and high-rise public housing, the New York avant-garde reinvented the city symphony, a modernist form that depicted a day in the life of an urban environment through complex montage, optical effects, and street portraiture. Erica Stein documents how these New York City symphonies subverted and critiqued urban redevelopment through their aesthetics, particularly their rhythms, and, through those same rhythms, envisioned a world in which urban inhabitants have the absolute right to remake the city according to their needs, outside the demands of capital.