Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century (October Books) [Paperback]

Jonathan Crary (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262531070 | ISBN-13: 978-0262531078 | Publication Date: February 25, 1992

In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity.Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing the historical construction of the observer. He insists that the problems of vision are inseparable from the operation of social power and examines how, beginning in the 1820s, the observer became the site of new discourses and practices that situated vision within the body as a physiological event. Alongside the sudden appearance of physiological optics, Crary points out, theories and models of "subjective vision" were developed that gave the observer a new autonomy and productivity while simultaneously allowing new forms of control and standardization of vision.Crary examines a range of diverse work in philosophy, in the empirical sciences, and in the elements of an emerging mass visual culture. He discusses at length the significance of optical apparatuses such as the stereoscope and of precinematic devices, detailing how they were the product of new physiological knowledge. He also shows how these forms of mass culture, usually labeled as "realist," were in fact based on abstract models of vision, and he suggests that mimetic or perspectival notions of vision and representation were initially abandoned in the first half of the nineteenth century within a variety of powerful institutions and discourses, well before the modernist painting of the 1870s and 1880s.Jonathan Crary is Assistant Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University. He is a founding editor of Zone and Zone Books.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Nimbly interweaving the histories of science, technology, philosophy, popular culture, and the visual arts, Jonathan Crary provides a stunning challenge to conventional wisdom about the epochal transformation of visual culture in the nineteenth century. Techniques of the Observer will be a vital resource for anyone concerned with the complex interaction of technological modernization and aesthetic modernism." Martin Jay , University of California at Berkeley

About the Author

Jonathan Crary is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University. A founding editor of Zone Books, he is the author of Techniques of the Observer (MIT Press, 1990) and coeditor of Incorporations (Zone Books, 1992). He has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Product Details

• Paperback: 183 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (February 25, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262531070
• ISBN-13: 978-0262531078
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #149,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Camera Isn't a Camera, March 30, 2005

By 

Audrey Kuenstler - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century (October Books) (Paperback)

HUGE thumbs up. Crary historicizes technological vision and illuminates an underrepresented point: things we're taught to think of as objective, such as cameras and vision, are in fact quite subjective and historical. They're ideas first, which means social/cultural ideas, from design to usage. Gradually these cultural ideas plus economic and technological possibility fuse into 'things'. The social aspects get invisibly embedded into these 'things' through myths of objectivity and modern people's desire to be taken care of by machines. When cultural values become things we are conditioned not to see the subjective part. Why? Our primary way of thinking is still the way of the Enlightenment -- from the 18th century -- which loves measuring and equating and separates 'myth' from 'science'. [Which is which? as Roger Waters asks, Do you think you can tell?] Western high culture privileges thinking and seeing over affect and body, imagining they are separate and valuing one over the other. Really it's just an excuse for laziness and cultural arrogance.

Read this book along with Eric Michaels' _Bad Aboriginal Art_ and Adorno and Horkheimer's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ to begin to see glimpses of Western cultural values and narratives embedded in today's supposedly 'objective' media such as photography, video, TV, vision, etc. Do the work and eventually technology will be a mirror of your own social/historical context.

16 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tricky but interesting, September 1, 2003

By 

HeyMardie (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century (October Books) (Hardcover)

Crary presents some interesting views on the perception of art. I found that it took a while for his ideas to formulate - the writing tends to be a bit wordy. I would recommend the book with reservations - really only for the serious academic reader. Not a casual bedside book.

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century, February 12, 2009

By 

Chen Yi Chun "vonda" (Taiwan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century (October Books) (Paperback)

lt tall me how to see,who to READ the wold.I get many important concept.