Abstract
Images are fellow travelers in time: they are permanent residents in our lives. We look at images in our homes, we see them on the surfaces of urban environments, and we encounter them in old and new media spheres. When we look at images, we “meet” them and engage in a complex game of distance and closeness. We search for familiarity and for difference; we enjoy the meeting or wish to forget it immediately. We try to understand the image by interpretation, but the encounter is far from being only rational: it also has a mysterious and unpredictable chemistry. Similar to looking at people, we frequently look at images, and on a very few occasions, we fall in love with them.
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© 2012 Jeffrey C. Alexander, Dominik Bartmański, and Bernhard Giesen
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Sonnevend, J. (2012). Iconic Rituals: Towards a Social Theory of Encountering Images. In: Alexander, J.C., Bartmański, D., Giesen, B. (eds) Iconic Power. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137012869_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137012869_14
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