Visual Methodologies

Visual culture is in a state of expansion, thus creating a need to establish and enhance theoretical methodologies and tools for the analysis of visual culture. Gillian Rose has written a well-structured book on different methods of interpreting visual images and materials. She presents a constructive analysis of the many theoretical frameworks in visual culture intertwined with relevant methodologies that provide some detail on how, why, and when one can use visual technologies to support one’s research or be part of one’s research. Her position concerns itself with cultural meaning and power, where she is interested in the ways social subjectivities and relations are pictured in visual images, and how those processes are embedded in power relations. Thus her book is concerned with methodologies used in the analyses of how images visualize social difference, how images are looked at, and with ways of seeing. The book begins with a discussion of critical debates related to visual culture and provides a detailed explanation of what she means by critical visual methodology. Through this introduction of visual culture, Rose establishes that interpretations of visual images exhibit three sites at which meanings of an image are made: the site of production of an image, the site of the image itself, and the site of audience. Each of these sites has three different aspects to them; the compositionality, the technological, and the social modality of the image. Each different methodology used in interpreting visual images is explained. The strengths and weaknesses of each method are discussed in relation to a detailed case study that is both theoretical and practical in context. The methods discussed include compositional interpretation, content analysis, semiology, psychoanalysis, discourse analysis, audience analysis, anthropological analysis, and methods of using photographs and videos as part of one’s research project. By using case studies, most of the chapters focus on a particular visual method of interpretation with reference to one form of visual imagery such as paintings, films, television, magazines, advertisements, and photographs. Rose’s long-standing interest in feminist film theory and feminist accounts of visual research has made her discussion on the methodology of psychoanalysis Visual Anthropology, 22: 77–79, 2009 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online DOI: 10.1080/08949460802341985