Mediated Images: Richard Dyer, The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations (Book Review)

What do we see when we look at a photograph in a magazine or a televised sport event? Different consumers see things differently. This raises questions for scholars and media workers alike about the role that the media plays in the production of images and their subsequent consumption. This consumption has been cultivated by a communications revolution in the twentieth century. Television, films, newspapers, magazines, digital billboards and screens, computer games and the internet — which utilise a range of audio-visual sensory techniques — have all facilitated instantaneous global broadcasting. The marketing of visual imagery has been an integral aspect of these developments in mass media transmission. In the context of the communications revolution, images convey meanings that transcend the simple sale of merchandised goods and products. Images highlight and sell ways of life, tastes, and ways of distinguishing oneself that are both tangible and intangible. They attempt to visually stimulate the audience into identifying with and accepting pre-constructed messages and meanings that provide a sense of immediacy and the feeling of being there. The authors of the books reviewed here all analyse the mechanisms used by the media to push images well beyond the mere representation of original subjects. While the reproduced image might appear as a moment of reality and truth, captured by the all-seeing eye of the artist with her camera, it is in the darkroom, during the development phase, that the image is actually manufactured. Within the selection and processing stage of image production, the media can influence consumer perception using these manufactured and realistic image representations. These representations communicate cultural, political and social perspectives with far reaching effect. As Cyndi Tebbel notes, citing the poet Allen Ginsberg, 'whoever controls the media ... controls the culture' (p. 89). This control of culture stems from the media projecting only those images that they believe represent ideal social norms in a favourable light. Although the different outlets that constitute the media provide an