Illegalized immigration is a highly iconic topic. The public perception of the current regime for mobility is profoundly shaped by visual and verbal images. As the issue of illegalized immigration is gaining increasing political momentum, the authors feel it is a well-warranted undertaking to analyze the role of images in the creation of illegalization. Their aim is to trace the visual processes that produce these very categories. The authors aim to map out an iconography of illegalized immigration in relation to political, ethical, and aesthetic discourses. They discuss the need to project...

Globalization euphoria and enthusiasm for the West are on the decline in contemporary China. Critical voices make themselves heard in artistic and cultural circles, turning towards their personal everyday lives to take stock. Their questions revolve around concrete experiences in the radical upheaval of lifeworlds, the continued significance of traditions after many of them have been thoroughly uprooted, and the paradoxes produced by the predominance of neo-liberalism. The 17 positions assembled in this volume provide a vivid illustration of such a "new thoughtfulness" in a wide variety of...

Scientific research on climate change has given rise to a variety of images which often make the invisible visible. They influence political processes but also the general perception of global weather events. As its subject the book takes the visual aspect of the climate discourse, treated here in sixteen interdisciplinary case studies. At its heart are images which depict the climate and climate change in very different ways - landscape photography, press photos, maps and diagrams used in climate science and climate skeptical media, but also artworks and the visual strategies of...

According to Walter Benjamin, the past that is not recognized by the present threatens to disappear irretrievably. As a consequence, photographs cannot save the moment from oblivion by pure depiction alone, but only by keeping the depicted moment actual at every present moment. Instead of counting on the documentary quality of photography that speaks in the past tense of "what has been," Silke Helmerdig suggests a different approach to photography: an extension of a future subjunctive (photographic) tense speaking of "what could be, if," allowing one to think possible futures instead of...