Chapter Overview

Chapter 4 of Reading Culture explores both the power and the inescapability of the image in both history and contemporary popular culture. This chapter asks you to "read" images in the same way that you read text—for meaning and for how the images connect to the world around you. While you are probably already doing this automatically, the text offers you tools to enable you to become more critically engaged with the images that surround you.

This Companion Website offers you the opportunity to further explore reading images. The five Web Exercises continue to explore issues of the image. Wired Culture investigates digital photography and photographic truth. Film Clip asks you to create a storyboard of a television commercial. Visual Culture Online explores image and advertising archives, and Mining the Web provides links to read about communication and cultural studies.