This special 35th anniversary edition contains the original, unchanged text that inspired a generation, alongside two new chapters that explore the book's continued significance for today's readers. The Preface provides a brief retrospective account of the book's original structure, the rich ethnographic, intellectual and theoretical work that informed it, and the historical context in which it appeared. In the new Afterword, each of the authors takes up a specific theme from the original book and interrogates it in the light of current crises, perspectives and contexts.

'This collection of classic essays in the study of visual culture fills a major gap in this new and expanding intellectual field. Its major strength is its insistence on the importance of three central aspects of the study of visual culture: the sign, the institution and the viewing subject. It will provide readers, teachers and students with an essential text in visual and cultural studies' - Janet Wolff, University of Rochester Visual Culture provides an invaluable resource of over 30 key statements from a wide range of disciplines, including four editorial essays which place the readings in their historical and theoretical context. Although underpinned by a focus on contemporary cultural theory, this Reader puts the study of visual culture and the rhetoric of the image at centre stage. Divided into three parts: Cultures of the Visual; Regulating Photographic Meaning; and Looking and Subjectivity, the Reader enables students to make hitherto unmade connections between art, film and photography history and theory, history, semiotics and communications, media studies, and cultural theory.Visual Culture sets the agenda for the study of Visual Culture and will be essential reading for researchers and students alike.