Description:
Bringing together a fascinatingly diverse yet closely related group of subjects, Where Words and Images Meet asks us to rethink what we know about words and images and how they interact.
From 19th-century frontispieces to Soviet photo albums, from the relationships between portraits and biographies to museum labels, the book's richly illustrated chapters open up historically specific connections between word and image to collective examination and fruitful analysis. Written by both established and emerging scholars in a range of interrelated fields, the chapters deliberately foreground previously overlooked topics as well as unfamiliar disciplinary approaches, to offer a stimulating and carefully developed framework for looking at these ubiquitous phenomena afresh. Where Words and Images Meet opens up for analysis and reflection the forms of attention, practices, skills and assumptions that underlie visual interpretation and meaning-making in the writing of history. By bringing the features of the materials we read and look at into focus, we can grasp more effectively the complex interrelationships involved, and enhance our practice and understanding.Brief description: Ludmilla Jordanova is Emeritus Professor of History and Visual Culture at Durham University, UK. She is also the author of History in Practice, 3rd Edition (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Review Quotes:
"Framed by a bracingly intelligent introduction and commentaries that challenge conventional notions about word/image relationships, the essays gathered here ground subtle arguments in detailed analyses of telling cases. The material is unfamiliar, the treatment eye-opening." --Elizabeth Cowling, University of Edinburgh, UK
"Words and images meet, and they also converse, in this exhilarating collection. It makes its mark not just as a sequence of enthralling case studies but as a model for fruitful interdisciplinary discussion." --Stephen Bann, Bristol University, UK "A superb edited volume ... Through their interventions as editors, Jordanova and Grant guide us through a series of thought-provoking topics. This is a book that asks us to think about why people put bookplates in their personal libraries, why we keep photographs, how popular illustrated journals function, and much, much more." --Stephen Norris, Miami University, USA