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Journal of Visual Culture

Journal of Visual Culture is an international refereed journal that welcomes compelling, critically engaged contributions that explore and expand trans-disciplinary global visual cultures.

“The Journal of Visual Culture is indispensable.” Professor Christine Ross, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University

“There is an unmistakable seriousness as well as a handsome hospitality in the range of method, topic and topography on show.” Times Higher Education Supplement

“The Journal of Visual Culture continues to be a critical resource for scholars looking for intelligent analyses of the visual arts, popular culture, media, curatorial practice and digital platforms.” Professor Jennifer A Gonzalez, University of California, Santa Cruz

“The Journal of Visual Culture is the place to look for cutting-edge research on the theory, practice, and circulation of visual culture today.” Dr Nicole Starosielski, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University

“The Journal of Visual Culture is a generous and inventive site of intellectual possibility where authors and guest editors can reconfigure how the visual and cultural come together, allowing for intellectual challenges to be made – critically and imaginatively – to current disciplinary protocols.” Professor Jane Rendell, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Recent themed issues include:

Armed/Unarmed: Guns in American Visual and Material Culture (2018), guest edited by Faye Gleisser and Delia Solomons, with contributors including Patrice D. Douglass, Michelle Millar Fisher, Colette Galter, Brian Hatton, Lindsay Livingston, and a roundtable with Attequa Ali, Jonathan Ferrara, Kathy O’Dell, and Susanne Slavick.

Affect at the Limits of Photography (2018), guest edited by Lisa Cartwright and Elizabeth Wolfson, with contributors including Ariella Azoulay, Lisa E. Bloom, Matthew Brower, Thy Phu and Elspeth H Brown, Kelli Moore, and Shaw Michelle Smith.

50 Years of Art and Objecthood: Traces, Impact, Critique (2017), edited by Alison Green and Joanne Morra, with contributors Alison Green, Stephen Melville, Joanne Morra, Daniel Rubinstein, Margarita Tupitsyn, Victor Tupitsyn, Phoebe von Held, Duncan White.

Architecture! (2016), edited by Jae Emerling and Ronna Gardner, with contributors Eric Aliez, Alfredo Brillembourg, Sarah Deyong, Alexi Kalagas, Hubert Klumpner, Robin Mackay, Lina Malfona, Gioancarlo Mazzanti, Robert McCarter, Donald Preziosi, Jane Rendell, Martino Stierli, Michael Waldrep.

Visual Activism (2016), edited by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jennifer González and Dominic Willsdon, with contributors Ariella Azoulay, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Deena Chalabi, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, Miguel A López, Amin Husain, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Nitasha Dhillon, A Joan Saab, Tina Takemoto, Avram Finkelstein, Aaron Gach, Cheyanne Epps, Kyle Lane-McKinley, Elisa Adami, TJ Demos, Amy Lyford, Carlos Motta, Trinh T Minh-ha, Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, Jerome Reyes, Nine Yamamoto-Masson, Teddy Cruz, Favianna Rodriguez, Zanele Muholi, Selaelo Mannya, Valerie Thomas, Shannon Jackson.

Recent and forthcoming contributions to Journal of Visual Culture include:

  • Jill Casid (UWM) on being undone
  • Georges Didi-Huberman (Paris) on the album of images
  • Tom Holert (Berlin) on immersion
  • Tung-Hui Hu (Michigan) on reticence
  • Esther Leslie (Birkbeck) on atmosphere
  • Rahul Mukherjee (UPenn) on ecologies of ruination
  • MIT’s Lisa Parks (interview by Asbjørn Grønstad and Øyvind Vågnes) on global media technologies
  • Nicole Starosielski (NYU) on thermal vision
  • Magda Szczesniak and Lukasz Zaremba (Warsaw) on paranoid looking
  • Linda Williams (Berkley) on lust, motion and e-motion
  • Beirut-based artist Akram Zaatari (interviewed by Elisa Adami) on history, photography, and the archive


Forthcoming themed issues for 2020 and beyond include:

Robot Vision, guest edited by Luci Eldridge (Winchester School of Art) and Nina Trivedi (Royal College of Art), with contributors including Jeremiah Ambrose, Brian Black, Stephen Ellis, Nea Ehrlich, Joey Holder, Gregory Minissale, Maya Oppenheimer, Nicola Plant, and Bianca Westermann.

Trans, Art, and Visual Culture, guest edited by Cyle Metzger (Stanford) and Kirstin Ringelberg (Elon University), with contributors including KJ Cerankowski, Kara Carmack, Sascha Crasnow, Sebastian De Line, Robb Hernandez, Heather Holmes, Ace Lehner, KJ Rawson and Nikki Tantum, Cole Rizki, Gregory Stamatina, Chris Straayer, Susan Stryker, Elisa Steinbock, and Frial Zachary.

VR: Immersion and Empathy, guest edited by Brooke Belisle (Stony Brook University) and Paul Roquet (MIT).

  • by Ella Klik
    Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 23, Issue 2, Page 256-274, August and December 2024. As humanity’s fascination with future cosmic voyages grows, the allure of images of outer space taken in the 20th century persists. This article examines how engineers, professionals and users rework old documentation of human and nonhuman endeavors into …
  • by Kamini Vellodi
    Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 23, Issue 2, Page 210-225, August and December 2024. This paper offers a response to Mieke Bal’s 2022-2023 College de France lectures, engaging in a dialogue with her concepts, in particular the concept of the inter-, which she also calls the ‘being-between’ (être-entre). My aim is to take Bal’s concepts in …
  • by Samira Makki
    Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 23, Issue 2, Page 238-255, August and December 2024. This article offers a new reading of Basma Alsharif’s work explored through the form of diary film. By problematizing the term ‘post- Palestinian’ with which Alsharif’s practice has been described, the author foregrounds the limits of post-language in …
  • by Mieke Bal
    Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 23, Issue 2, Page 195-209, August and December 2024. In this article I argue for a form of identity with an expectation and a promise of relationality. Europe needs such a commitment if it wants to be a union. The mode of living in what I call ‘being in-between’ entails a relationship with others, persons, …
  • by Julian Stallabrass, in conversation with Christian Lutz
    Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 23, Issue 2, Page 226-237, August and December 2024. This interview explores the ways in which the complex phenomenon of right-wing populism in Europe was captured visually in a book and exhibition project by Christian Lutz. The dialogue includes discussion of Lutz’s approach to the subject, his way of …
  • by Megan Wiessner, Sam Kellogg, Nicole Starosielski
    Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 23, Issue 2, Page 156-167, August and December 2024. This visual essay traces the mediated production of an emergent sense of place, the ‘Silicon Heartland’, through one of its epicenters, the growing town of New Albany, Ohio. Here, visions of midwestern pastoral heritage and industrial productivity are …
  • by Agata Lisiak
    Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 23, Issue 2, Page 131-155, August and December 2024. In this article, the author proposes thinking of Rosa Luxemburg’s herbarium as a manifestation of plant companionship, a term she uses to describe the practice of noticing plant life and acknowledging it for what it is, caring for and about it, protecting …
  • by Berin Golonu
    Journal of Visual Culture, Volume 23, Issue 2, Page 168-194, August and December 2024. This article looks at three contemporary photo-based projects that reference Istanbul’s visual histories and document its endangered ecologies. These works take a critical approach to cultural heritage practices in contrast to official discourses that …