Elkins, James (ed.). Visual Literacy, Routledge, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-415-95811-0. RRP: $27.95.
In his preface, editor James Elkins describes 'visual literacy' as a 'dishevelled field'. It is this field — or minefield — that he invites readers to enter via the essays (originally conference papers) presented here.
Given that much university education is dominantly and sometimes entirely text-based, the central issue of whether there can and ought to be a stronger emphasis on the visual is a valuable, challenging, perhaps even threatening one, for denizens of academia.
Contributors come from diverse disciplinary areas, such as law, education, politics, technology, medicine, science, art, visual studies and culture. In the conference context, the writers were able to hear and appreciate different positions, familiarise themselves with each other's ideas, and redraft their papers for publication.
Theirs is a somewhat privileged position because of this, and because of their having begun with a common interest as well as a specialised knowledge and language that not all readers will start with or share.
Nevertheless, Elkins' hope is that those who read the essays will gain at least a provisional sense of what the 'theories, practices, competencies and literacies' associated with 'visual literacy' might mean for tertiary education in general and for their own work in particular.
In addressing this concern, each essayist supplies what is in both senses of the word a 'partial' description of visual literacy, its significance and limits.
Approaches vary. Dallow, for instance, explores the 'interdisciplinary dimensions' of visual literacy, whereas Enquist reports on how recourse to the visual can help to bridge the communicative 'gap' between the focus of clinicians on diagnostic images and the concerns which find expression in patient-created imaging.
Such differences have to do not only with the professional preoccupations of particular contributors but also with the significant question of whether 'visual literacies' belong within or are separate from the concept of 'visual literacy'. (One might also ask what links there are between 'visual literacy' and other forms of literacy.)
What would it mean to affirm the place of the visual within all areas of tertiary education? What kind of university would enable this and what freedoms are involved or need protection? There is no easy or one-dimensional solution, as Simons shows in his comments on the current state of universities and the political shifts required to achieve such a goal.
By adding photographs, the editor has tried to redress what remains a significant imbalance