Description
Book SynopsisIn an age when the visual landscape dominates our communication, War Images offers the rationale and the method by which we can critically engage images. Though focused on war images, this book provides a broad appreciation of how "reading" images is an act of social courage and personal responsibility.
Trade ReviewIn its brief compass, War Images offers much more than the title suggests. While providing incisive commentary on specific images of war over the past two centuries, it makes a compelling argument for the centrality of visual literacy to civic education today. The reader will find in Sassower and Cicotello two very informed and reliable guides, who bring the complementary skills of the theorist and the practitioner of art to the complex and often emotive issues that surround the depiction and interpretation of war. No one should ignore their call to incorporate counter-imagery and counter-contextualization into the mainstream of critical political discourse. -- Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, University of Warwick, author of The Intellectual
Sassower and Cicotello's book makes a powerful claim: that images, often contrived images, have become our way of mediating reality. Without doubt war and its horrors is real. Yet no image of war comes without an interpretation, an element of contrivance. Some interpretation is intended; but the intended can be subverted by the observer. The critical approach to images is fraught with difficulty and uncertainty. The authors show that image makers and image disseminators try to exercise control but they no more can than their audience can. -- Ian Jarvie, York University
Table of ContentsPart 1 Chapter One: Modern and Postmodern Fabrication Chapter 2 I.Modern Reality and the Postmodern Condition Chapter 3 II.Fabricating War Images Chapter 4 III.The Predicament of Framing War Images Part 5 Chapter Two: War Images Chapter 6 I. Photospread Chapter 7 II. Analysis of the Images Chapter 8 III.Annotated Image List Part 9 Chapter Three: Recapturing Reality Chapter 10 I.Representing the Realities of War Chapter 11 II.The Predicament of Just War Theories Chapter 12 III.The Power of Images, the Images of Power: Censorship Part 13 Chapter Four: The Pragmatic Promise Chapter 14 I. The Moral Dimensions of War and Terrorism Chapter 15 II. Fabricated War Images as Pragmatic Politics Chapter 16 III. Pedagogy of Critical Aesthetic Engagement
