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Les images sont au coeur de tous les enjeux contemporains. Elles concernent à la fois la question de la connaissance, de l'éthique, de l'esthétique et du politique. Ce que l'on appelle la mondialisation est la production et la diffusion des mêmes images exerçant une fonction de séduction et de manipulation. Mais à ces dernières, la photographie, les arts plastiques, le cinéma, la vidéo peuvent résister en créant d'autres images.

All societies are shaped by arts, media, and other persuasive practices that can awe, captivate, enchant or otherwise seem to cast a spell on the audience. Likewise, scholarship itself often is driven by a sense of wonder and a willingness to be open to what lies beyond the obvious. This book broadens and deepens this perspective. Inspired by Stephen Tyler's view of ethnography as an art of evocation, international scholars from the fields of aesthetics, anthropology, and rhetoric explore the spellbinding power of elusive meanings as people experience them in daily life and while gazing at works of art, watching films or studying other cultures. The book is divided into three parts covering the evocative power of visual art, the immersion in ritual and performance, and the reading, writing, and interpretation of texts. Taken as a whole, the contributions to the book demonstrate how astonishment and evocation deserve an important place in the conceptual repertoire of the human sciences.

Colour permeates contemporary visual and material culture and affects our senses beyond the superficial encounter by infiltrating our perceptions and memories and becoming deeply rooted in thought processes that categorise and divide along culturally constructed lines. Colour exists as a cultural as well as psycho-physical phenomenon and acquires a multitude of meanings within differing historical and cultural contexts. The contributors examine how colour becomes imbued with specific symbolic and material meanings that tint our constructions of race, gender, ideal bodies, the relationship of the self to others and of the self to technology and the built environment. By highlighting the relationship of colour across media and material culture, this volume reveals the complex interplay of cultural connotations, discursive practices and socio-psychological dynamics of colour in an international context.

Der Titel BILD/GESCHICHTE lässt eine Vielzahl von Verbindungen assoziieren – von der Geschichtlichkeit der Bilder bis zur Rolle der Bilder als ‚Akteure'in der Geschichte. Die beiden Begriffe bezeichnen die Pole, um die Horst Bredekamps Forschungen kreisen. Ihm zu Ehren entstand dieser Band, der vor allem wissenschaftliche, aber auch künstlerische Beiträge versammelt. Ausgehend von der These, dass eine kritische Wissenschaft des Bildes notwendig Bildgeschichte ist und eine Entkoppelung von Bild und Geschichte prinzipiell ein kritisches Verständnis von Bildern verhindert, gliedert sich der Band in sechs Sektionen: Disziplinäre Perspektiven, Vernetztes Wissen, Bild und Erkenntnis, Transformationen, Bild-Politik und Selbstbilder in Kunst und Wissenschaft. Er enthält interdisziplinäre Beiträge u.a. von Hans Belting, Gottfried Boehm, Friedrich Kittler, Dieter Grimm und Barbara M. Stafford, die wie auch Horst Bredekamp zu den wichtigsten, international renommierten Vertretern ihres Faches gehören.

Questions of vision and knowledge are central to debates about the world in which we live. Developing new analytical approaches toward ways of seeing is a key challenge facing those working across a wide range of disciplines. How can visuality be understood on its own terms rather than by means of established textual frameworks? Visualizing Anthropology takes up this challenge. Bringing together a range of perspectives anchored in practice, the book maps experiments in the forms and techniques of visual enquiry. The origins of this collection lie in visual anthropology. Although the field has greatly expanded and diversified, many of the key debates continue to be focused around the textual concerns of the mainstream discipline. In seeking to establish a more genuinely visual anthropology, the editors have sought to forge links with other kinds of image-based projects. Ethnography is the shared space of practice. Understood not as a specialized method but as cultural critique, the book explores new collaborative possibilities linked to image-based work.

What happens when a Native or indigenous person turns a video camera on his or her own culture? Are the resulting images different from what a Westernized filmmaker would create, and, if so, in what ways? How does the use of a non-Native art-making medium, specifically video or film, affect the aesthetics of the Native culture? These are some of the questions that underlie this rich study of Native American aesthetics, art, media, and identity. Steven Leuthold opens with a theoretically informed discussion of the core concepts of aesthetics and indigenous culture and then turns to detailed examination of the work of American Indian documentary filmmakers, including George Burdeau and Victor Masayesva, Jr. He shows how Native filmmaking incorporates traditional concepts such as the connection to place, to the sacred, and to the cycles of nature. While these concepts now find expression through Westernized media, they also maintain continuity with earlier aesthetic productions. In this way, Native filmmaking serves to create and preserve a sense of identity for indigenous people.