Introducción

Abstract

A few years ago, using the concept "visual culture" would probably have resulted in confusion (and consternation) rather than communication. That has changed. As Susan Buck-Morss remarked, "Visual culture, once a foreigner to the academy, has gotten its green card and is here to stay." Today, the study of modes and techniques of visual address is fundamental to thinking critically about the times in which we find ourselves, and crucial for an education relevant to a world undergoing an "image revolution" on a scale so unprecedented that we are warned about the dangers of "hypervisuality". Indeed, the incipient development of visual studies programs has been a direct - if tardy - reaction to the hegemony of images in contemporary society. The power exercised by the myriad pictures which inundate our daily lives has generally received little attention in academia because they are produced by new and/or "unrespectable" media: photography, film, video, cartoons, advertising, computers, etc.