Vision and Verticality

This rich and accessible volume maps current debates within the expanded field of image-based, vertical analysis. With contributions from astronauts, artists, architects, sociologists, urbanists, visual culture theorists, geographers, anthropologists and more the book signals new moves in inter and multidisciplinary research on visual-vertical thinking and related practices within the social sciences, humanities and across the arts.

Grounded in socio-visual thinking, Vision and Verticality addresses the emerging shift in the way social scientists move from a sociology of or through images towards a sociology with images. In doing so, this volume illustrates how the sky and atmosphere remain a surprisingly underexplored domain within visual sociology, beyond the framework of drone-related research. Finally, this volume asserts how vertical and atmospherically framed socio-visual analysis is beginning to shape and inform how we see and experience urban spaces, travel, leisure, politics, and environmental challenges through various prisms, including artistic practices, methodological processes, and user-generated content.  

“Vision and Verticality offers dialogue across disciplines, integration of novel and well-worn theories, reports on research, and reflection on the meaning of the new modern.It is is dizzying, brilliant and eclectic the topics introduced will have a broad reach and currency far into the future.” (Douglas Harper, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Duquesne University, USA. Founding member of the International Visual Sociological Association)

“Vision and Verticality is a quite beautiful and highly original collection on vision, verticality and the immersive volumes of the air. It is an enthralling, soaring book, told from multiple established and emerging voices, which offers grounding and lift to an emergent more-than sociological expanse of verticality, air and their multitudes of practice. Extraordinary.” (Peter Adey, Professor of Human Geography and Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Melbourne, Royal Holloway University of London, UK)

"This book is an accessible, provocative and thoughtfully curated collection of groundbreaking interventions into the increasingly multidisciplinary field of Visual Studies. Pedagogically and polemically rich, the volume sets forth an expanded field of visual inquiry that broadens understandings of advanced technological imaging that have been overlooked.” (Derek Conrad Murray, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, USA) 

Gary Bratchford is a Senior Lecturer of Photography and Associate Director of Creative Practice Research Academy at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. He is the president of the International Sociological Association’s Visual Sociology Research Committee (RC57) and Co Editor of Visual Studies Journal.

Dennis Zuev is Professor at the University of Saint Joseph, Macau, China, and Senior Researcher at CIES-ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal. He is a cofounder (in 2006) and vice-president (research) of ISA Research Committee in Visual Sociology (2010–2018).