The look as a medium: a conceptual framework and an exercise for teaching visual studies

Abstract

The paper considers the particular value of focusing on the look as a medium when studying visual cultures. This focus is helpful for coming to terms with distinct understandings of the visual. To address the look as a medium, four analytical dimensions are introduced for distinguishing among separate but closely interrelated visual phenomena: the look becomes understandable via its mediations, some media are explicitly created to be looked at, the look itself acts as a medium of images and looking is a skilled practice that must be learned. In light of the approach outlined, an exercise is presented for teaching the look as a medium at university level: this exercise in ‘looking into each other’s eyes’ is applied with the aim of sparking interest in the topic and stimulating debate on its various dimensions. Thus, it is intended to be generative, an exercise to think with.

Keywords:

• Visual cultures
• photography
• skilled vision
• medium
• faces

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the students, with whom I have been able to develop this work on the look as a medium, as well as Anna Shefl for thorough proofreading and Seija Ridell for discussions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 W. J. T. Mitchell’s (2002) article ‘Showing Seeing’ has served as inspiration for the development of my own exercises.

2 I have applied this exercise in university seminars at UC Berkeley, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Tampere.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland [Digital Face].