As I write this, the holiday season is upon us, and I'm thinking of giving in terms of its visual manifestations. In this issue of VCQ you'll be getting several visual gifts.
Starting with the cover, Michael Scully's playful photograph takes us into a miniaturized world with a surrealistic quality. Professor Scully talks more about his photographs in this issue's Portfolio.
The next two photos, one with the Table of Contents and one on this page, were taken on the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada. The amusingly profane Santa, though rough around the edges, loves us and needs us. We know he can never be thoroughly bad (thank you, appreciated). The photos can make us laugh, upset us, or make us scratch our heads. Here we have photos of a man who comes to Fremont StreetFootnote1 dressed as Santa Claus. He is juxtaposed against the throngs of tourists, casino entrances, super heroes, mimes, T-shirt booths, and lights along the pedestrian walkway. He embodies a history of bad Santa portrayals from the anti-Santa myth of Krampus, who is a part of Central European folklore, to Dr. Seuss's Grinch who stole Christmas (but ultimately brings it back), to Billy Bob Thornton's portrayal in Miramax's Bad Santa. The photos symbolize many things, including consumer culture and religious tradition. Moreover, bad Santa is an antisymbol, poking a finger in eye of social norms. Whether it's a movie, or a Las Vegas act, the cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking Santa is, of course, a money-making venture, with tips collected from onlookers. Is he really bad? Will this irreverent Santa give his tips to charity or buy another carton of cigarettes? In the end, we need bad Santa and his amusing jabs at traditional culture, as much as he needs us.
The research gifts in this issue all contain nuggets of origin. Candice Edrington and Victoria Gallagher tell us where the phrase “Black Lives Matter” originated as they examine the role images play in today's discourse about race. Sheree Josephson and Melina Myers start off with the origin of augmented reality as they apply eye-tracking methodology in a comparative study of app usability. Timothy Gleason looks at the origins of commercial photography in his look at one of the forgotten masters of this form, H. H. Bennett. David Staton provides another excellent book review written by Andy Sturt, and Dennis Dunleavy never fails to inspire with annotations of recent work in our field.
And so, VCQ is our gift to a culture rich in visual images. May the holidays and the New Year bring us new journeys and successful explorations of visual phenomena of all sorts.
Notes
1 Fremont Street is one of the bigger concentrations of tourists in the city.