Abstract
The use of image-processing procedures and techniques and their products – photographs, aerial photographs, satellite images, maps – and the application of GIS and GPS, so-called “geomatics” (Thornes, 2004:787), are taken for granted in academic geographical practice today. This practice involves the development and adaptation of cartographic and visual material as well as the application and communication of geographical knowledge in a non-textual way. Technical developments in both hardware and software mean that visual representations can be created, reproduced and edited with comparative ease (Thornes, 2004). However, there is a certain imbalance between this progressive habitualization to the use of visual materials and the paucity of related critical reflection. In contrast to the “fundamental visual disciplines” (Sachs-Hombach, 2005:14)1 such as philosophy, psychology, cognition studies, communications science and art history, which explicitly study the typology, use and functions of images, geography has so far produced practically no systematic attempts to develop a visual theory. Geography is primarily a discipline that uses images. Indeed: “It sounds almost trivial to point out that geography is a quintessentially visual enterprise” (Sui, 2000:322). Hitherto, geography’s visual approach to the world and its attempts to develop a clear picture of reality, seem rather to have inhibited epistemological reflection on visuality and visualisation (Tuan, 1979; Rose, 2003). Thus images and visuality could prove to be a geographical blind spot for the very reason that they play such a prominent role in geography.
Highlights
This blind spot is becoming increasingly evident in the context of the broad interest in visual theory that has formed around the current pictorial turn (Mitchell, 1992) and/or iconic turn (Boehm, 1994, see Sauerlander, 2004 for a critical view)
This is not so much an expression of a new interest in images, visuality, or, more generally, sensory perceptions, because these are virtually constitutive of the subject. Instead it is a manifestation of the attempt to deal critically and reflectively with geographical visualisations, as well as to take into account the significance of visuality in the constitution of spatio-temporal realities.2. This special issue of the journal Social Geography dedicated to “Visual geographies” brings together a series of contributions on the relationships between space, images and society; most of them are based on papers given at a conference on “Visualisation of space –producing, presenting, profiling” which was held at the Leibniz Institute of Regional Geography in 2005
In recent years there has been much discussion of the fact that spaces are produced through the means of language and communication, and that geographies are created by systems of signs and symbols and as representations
Summary
The use of image-processing procedures and techniques and their products – photographs, aerial photographs, satellite images, maps – and the application of GIS and GPS, so-called “geomatics” (Thornes, 2004:787), are taken for granted in academic geographical practice today. Images and visuality could prove to be a geographical blind spot for the very reason that they play such a prominent role in geography This blind spot is becoming increasingly evident in the context of the broad interest in visual theory that has formed around the current pictorial turn (Mitchell, 1992) and/or iconic turn (Boehm, 1994, see Sauerlander, 2004 for a critical view). Instead it is a manifestation of the attempt to deal critically and reflectively with geographical visualisations, as well as to take into account the significance of visuality in the constitution of spatio-temporal realities.2 This special issue of the journal Social Geography dedicated to “Visual geographies” brings together a series of contributions on the relationships between space, images and society; most of them are based on papers given at a conference on “Visualisation of space –producing, presenting, profiling” which was held at the Leibniz Institute of Regional Geography in 2005. An initial examination of the issues identifies two central, linked foci which should form a starting point for reflection on visual theory in geography
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