W.j.t. Mitchell

Almost thirty years ago, W. J. T. Mitchell's Iconology helped launch the interdisciplinary study of visual media, now a central feature of the modern humanities. Along with his subsequent Picture Theory and What Do Pictures Want?, Mitchell's now-classic work introduced such ideas as the pictorial turn, the image/picture distinction, the metapicture, and the biopicture.

The first edition of this book, published in 1994, reshaped the direction of landscape studies by considering landscape not simply as an object to be seen or a text to be read, but as an instrument of cultural force, a central tool in the creation of national and social identities.