The Visibility of the Image

Professor Lambert Wiesing (shown here with students at the University of Jena, Germany)  wrote Die Sichtbarkeit des Bildes [The Visibility of the Image] quite some time ago.  It was first published in 1996!  The first edition sold out (!) and he arranged for a second edition in 2008.  It’s been something like a best-seller (given that it is philosophy) in Germany, and has been translated into Polish and French.

The book traces a chain of events, specifically the development of formal aesthetics within philosophy. Names familiar in art history, such as Riegl, Wöllflin, Panofsky, appear in a very different light, their terms and thought processes closely associated with the development of formal logic in mathematics and, later, in language analytic philosophy.  The history is presented is such a way as to simultaneously introduce contemporary image theory, a discipline that has clearly flourished in Germany in particular.

I feel fairly sure that a great deal of this book will be new to English speakers.  It is an honour to be the English translator, and a pleasure to be working once again with the lovely team at Bloomsbury Academic!