What is an image? Roundtable transcription, International Visual Sociology Association annual conference, 16 September 2022

Since its inception, the IVSA and visual sociologists have felt a kinship with practitioners in other disciplines. Visual studies has developed into a vibrant interdisciplinary field of study, one that spans the social sciences, arts, and humanities. As interrelated intellectual arenas, visual studies, visual sociology, and visual culture all tend to view images as central to the formation of meaning in the social world.

In this year’s Roundtable, we asked a diverse range of scholars and practitioners to consider what an image is today. In our twenty-first century culture, defined by rapid technological change and innovation, the very notion of an image has shifted dramatically. The visual is everywhere; it is arguably the most potent and ubiquitous form of communication today. In what manner has technology transformed our understandings of what an image can be? New technologies, networks, and infrastructures have impacted on both theory and practice – and have led to a radical shift in contemporary aesthetics and visual languages. And the ideological stakes brought to bear by visuality today are entangled with pernicious forms of social control: from the perils of consumer capitalism to the dangers of political propaganda. As scholar Alexis Boylan reminds us, ‘the visual surrounds us, some of it invited, most of it not.’

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