Visual Culture. Wikipedia. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

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describe visual culture as an academic field that could imply forms of cultural studies, art
history, critical theory, philosophy, and anthropology and relate on those aspects which
refers of culture that rely on visual images. Therefore, visual culture early implies a
discussion on the relation of how information gained through visual capacity are
assimilated in cultural forms.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. What is Visual Culture? The Visual Culture Reader, 2002. Nicholas
Mirzoeff, referring to visual technology argues that the field under the term "visual
culture"," gathers visual events in which information, meaning or pleasure is sought by
the consumer in an interface with visual technology. And visual technology is therefore
any media that implies the need of visual capability.
Elkins, James . What is Visual Studies? Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction, 2013. James
Elkins distinguish between cultural studies, visual studies and visual culture. The layers
between those are thin, but still important according to Elkins. Cultural studies started by
being concerned in the field of history and sociology and then extend to other domains.
As contained in the term, visual culture refers to a narrower part of cultural studies,
that that concerns the visual. But also, Elkins differentiated one of each other, by argue
that the visual culture was in fact an American movement, younger than the English
origin of cultural studies. This is relevant when regarding their fields of concern, visual
culture being more influenced and focused on art history than interested in social issues.
The third term, that of visual studies was chosen in order to redirect the attention to the
fact that it is about the form much more than about the social or another aspect that the
term culture might imply.
Mansour, Louis George H. Roeder Filling in the picture: Visual Culture The Challenge of
American History. 1999., George Roeder derives a simple definition of Visual Culture
out of Gertrude Stein biography of Picasso: Visual culture is what is seen. Roeder said
that Gertrude Stein observed that what changes over time is what it is seen, therefore,
what is seen results out of everybodys actions. What is seen depends on what there is to
see and how we look at it. So the definition of visual culture would be: Visual culture
depends on what there is to see and how we look at it.
Mitchell, W.J.T., Showing seeing: a critique of visual culture, Journal Of Visual Culture,
2002.,W.J.T. Mitchell define visual culture by separating the image (in a broad sense)
and the visual image. He is arguing that the image do not exhaust the field of visual,
therefore the image studies would not be the same as visual studies, but the visual studies
is a component of this larger domain.
Bal, Mieke, Visual essentialism and the object of visual culture, Journal Of Visual Culture,
2003., Mieke Bal argues that any attempt to articulate goals or methods in order to study

visual culture, must be aware of the negative aspect of each term. Visual as impure,
discursive, pragmatic and culture as shifting, differential, regional and operated inside the
paradigm of power and resistance.