Image and Representation: Key Concepts in Media Studies [Paperback]

Nick Lacey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312212038 | ISBN-13: 978-0312212032 | Publication Date: August 15, 1998 | Edition: First Edition

This book offers readers a lively, clear and practical introduction to two of the most central concepts in the study of media, culture and communication: media language and representation. Beginning with the basic components of image analysis, including framing, mise-en-scène, anchorage and genre, this book goes on to examine the contribution of semiotics to our understanding of the messages media texts convey. It then considers debates around authorial intent, "preferred" readings, ideology and discourse. The book subsequently explores the web of codes and interpretation that constructs representation and looks at important issues to do with stereotyping, propaganda, realism and the documentary. Packed with graphic and memorable examples and case studies taken from a range of contemporary and classic media texts, and carefully interspersed with suggestions for further activity or study, the book offers a lucid review of key theories that pays due attention to their practical application.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Reviews of the first edition: '...illustrated with occasional diagrams, photographs and film stills, and divided into bite-size sections and subsections...this is a tightly structured, complete, coherent course.' - In The Picture 'This is a stimulating and helpful book, with loads of material and texts from a wide range of media. Despite having to bring in some difficult concepts, Nick Lacey's obvious love and enthusiasm for his subject should encourage and spur his target audience - the post-16 media student - to a more careful and critical approach to all aspects of media texts.' - AC Dewar, Media Education Journal 'I liked Lacey's tone to his reader: getting them involved, chatting to them almost, in the manner of Open University course books. This involvement with the reader is further reinforced by the number of exercises (again varying in difficulty) which the reader is expected to do...This is a stimulating and helpful book, with loads of material and texts from a wide range of media. Despite having to bring in some difficult concepts, Nick Lacey's obvious love and enthusiasm for his subject should encourage and spur his target audience - the post-16 media student - to a more careful and critical approach to all aspects of media texts.' - Media Education Journal 'At last, a straight forward foundation book on the analysis of image and representation. This book will teach everyone to read images.' - Customer Review, Amazon --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Nick Lacey is Head of Media Studies at Benton Park School in West Yorkshire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 266 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (August 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312212038
• ISBN-13: 978-0312212032
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,580,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear, concise introduction for undergraduates, April 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Image and Representation: Key Concepts in Media Studies (Paperback)

THis book is a fine and in many ways unique addition to possible choices for textbooks for an undergraduate course in critical theories of image analysis (or introduction for general readers interested in this topic). Lacey is Head of Media Studies at a post-16 school in West Yorkshire, England. This book appears to be an outcome of his own teaching at this level as well as his professed primary interest in film.

Its major accomplishment is to clearly link image analysis to the field of communication, as well as to reintroduce social and historical considerations into what is too often considered either an individualist or a formalist task. Lacey emphasizes throughout that individual interpretations have a common basis determined by culture and history, and that individual images can be examined carefully in order to suggest this basis.

By taking this view, Lacey avoids the "art-appreciation" trap, stressing that the goal of interpretation is to describe how images work in society, not what the proper meaning is. He also deftly minimizes the mechanistic implications of a (generally speaking) semiotic perspective by emphasizing that codes are fluid social conventions, not invariant and timeless structures.

Lacey begins Chapter 1 by introducing linguist Roman Jakobson's model of communication, a six-faceted one consisting of addresser, addressee, context, message, contact, and code, to emphasize the social and contextual nature of interpretation. This is combined with a clear run-down of features of images, from nonverbal communication (such as facial expression, body gestures, and clothing) to form (such as framing, angle, height, and depth of field) and content (subject, lighting, and setting). Additional media-specific features (such as anchorage and juxtaposition) and editing are also noted. This discussion is particularly useful for students who have not taken courses in television- or film-production or in photography. All this and more takes place in the (50-page) first chapter, no less!

Chapter 2, which introduces semiotic analysis via Saussure, Peirce, and Barthes, finishes the overtly methodological discussion. It does as good a job as any on a notoriously difficult topic.

The remaining five chapters build upon the theoretical and descriptive basis laid down in the first two. Stronger chapters alternate between somewhat weaker ones.

Chapter 4, titled "Advanced Image Analysis," introduces larger issues surrounding images (and media) in society from a cultural and critical perspective. Brief discussions of authorial intent, preferred reading, discourse, and hegemony are fleshed out with an account of alternative ways of editing and a short history of Western images and their uses in society.

Similarly, Chapter 6, titled "Representation and Reality," provides a clear introduction to the emergence of realism as a way of understanding and packaging the world. The discussion ranges from a history of realism to its use in documentaries and the challenges to it in the late 1960s. Less useful chapters include a short elaboration of Jakobson's theory of communication (I've generally skipped it when assigning readings from this book). Case studies included in Chapter 5 reflect the experience of Lacey's primary audience in Britain, and students in this country may find them obscure and therefore less useful. Chapter 7 contains the almost obligatory discussion of new technology, but it unfortunately has little new to say.

In sum, though, Lacey has done a fine job with this book. The stronger chapters not only provide students with a conceptual and methodological framework, they acquaint students with major issues while also including fine, brief discussions about the uses of images in history.

Suggested exercises are scattered throughout the text in key places (most work well as prompts for in-class discussion), in addition to many clearly described examples and a compact bibliography at the end that serves as a resource for students interested in reading in more depth.

Of course, no book can do it all. But this book packs more between the covers than any I've yet found.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last!, September 10, 2002

By 

Sylvia Hottinger (Madrid, Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Image and Representation: Key Concepts in Media Studies (Paperback)

At last, a straight forward foundation book on the analysis of image and representation. It covers the analysis of photography as well as that of cinema step by step. Lacey also gives precise definitons of all the components of an image, what elements are to be taken into account when, why and how. His manual covers camera techniques and semiotics with unprecedented clarity. Saussure, Barthes, Pierce and other classics in the realm of linguistics are explained and applied. The excercises he proposes for the classroom are fun and straight to the point. This book will teach everyone to read images.