As society has become increasingly digitalized, it has become evident that media consumed daily should not be disregarded. Exclaiming, "my amazon is listening to me!" upon seeing cat food in a pop-up advertisement after a conversation about your pet is not an uncommon experience in 2023. However, the notion that there is a greater "power" in control over our media experience is not a new one. The "war of images" seen during the Bush presidency, the depictions of Thanksgiving in public school textbooks, and the prohibition against "graven images" as seen in the ten commandments all represent this power in practice. But where does this power come from? This means to exercise power is a byproduct of (What Nicholas Mirzeoff calls) Visuality, and the process of looking at these power complexes for what they are is claiming the right to look.

According to Mirzeoff, visuality is what power makes you see-- in the real world. Contrary to sight and different from visuality, vision involves all the senses. Sight is merely the physical phenomenon that allows our eyes to see, whereas vision is a complex concept involving every aspect of analysis and discourse. All of these terms are crucial in understanding what is known as visual culture. Visual culture, unlike its name may suggest, is more than just the media that is seen by the eye. It is all the media that surrounds us… that forms our culture.

A problematic complex arises when that which is visualized is perceived as the truth. Because visual culture is so multi-faceted, it can't perfectly represent what exists in real life. This leads visuality to become a force that organizations and people in power can use to mediate visual perception. A famous example is Colin Powell's address to the United Nations in 2003, claiming to show the sites of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq using Satellite images. Through cautious rhetoric, Powell convinced almost all member countries that these blurry pictures were concrete evidence of these weapons.



Colin Powell's address is just one example of what is known as "The War of Images," a phenomenon in the decade following 9/11 in which images (many of which were quite gruesome) from Afghanistan and Iraq were available to the public. The Bush administration attempted to use these images to paint a picture of "good" and "evil," but visual culture quickly blurs this line. An example is the Abu Ghraib photographs of detainees held by the US military in 2004. Average civilians had never seen images like this, so there was initially a massive shock value. However, over time, the saturation of so many photos rendered them less impactful as they had become trite.

In his introduction, Mirzeoff writes about the fetishism of our response to visual culture. We are now surrounded by so many images that they no longer hold that same "shock value" that was more common during the "war of images" period. Because of this saturation of content, individuals lose the ability to know how to act or respond. It is a response to visual culture itself and not that of which visual culture is representing. Mirzeoff gave global warming as an example. We know that it exists. We have suffered great devastation (Katrina shown below), yet no serious international response has been created. The actual problem is no longer deemed as important by society, but the implications and epistemologies of specific images are. This is why now more than ever, claiming our right to look is vital. To question everything we see and seek the whole truth. And not only that but to act on it.