Four Types of Visual Culture

Fashionable Muslims: Notions of Self, Religion, and Society in Sanà

“…There are also major changes in veiling styles, which have a particular aesthetic effect that intertwines with and build on notions of authenticity, modernity, and mobility. Aesthetics here does not refer to beauty, but rather to a particular sensibility and taste, a perception by feeling (Pinney 2006). Without going into too much detail about the various types of veils worn and running the risk of simplifying what is far more complex, three major styles of covering the face can be distinguished: the lithma, the niqab, and the burqu, each of which has a different aesthetic effect.…”

Exphrasis: Verbalizing Unexisting Objects in the World of Design

“…4. The term "visual language" (Mitchell 1994 defines it as "visible language") became popular among art critics at the end of the eighteenth century (Reynolds 1975), reaching its peak during the twentieth century (Gombrich 1956;Goodman 1976;Pinney 2006). 5.…”

Introduction—Uncertain Visions: Crisis, Ambiguity, and Visual Culture in Greece

“…By “visual” I mean various things. Essays in this issue ponder the possibilities of doing anthropology with visual images; they explore “visual culture” in Svetlana Alpers’s treatment of the term as “a repertoire of expectation and potentiality” around vision (Pinney :131), and they analyze visual representations and their multiple receptions and cultural productivity. These do not, of course, exhaust the visual's role in Greek social experiences, but open up ways to rethink its various positions in contemporary social imagination and practice.…”