Where Words and Images Meet

Bringing together a fascinatingly diverse yet closely related group of subjects, Where Words and Images Meet asks us to rethink what we know about words and images and how they interact.

From 19th-century frontispieces to Soviet photo albums, from the relationships between portraits and biographies to museum labels, the book’s richly illustrated chapters open up historically specific connections between word and image to collective examination and fruitful analysis. Written by both established and emerging scholars in a range of interrelated fields, the chapters deliberately foreground previously overlooked topics as well as unfamiliar disciplinary approaches, to offer a stimulating and carefully developed framework for looking at these ubiquitous phenomena afresh.

Where Words and Images Meet opens up for analysis and reflection the forms of attention, practices, skills and assumptions that underlie visual interpretation and meaning-making in the writing of history. By bringing the features of the materials we read and look at into focus, we can grasp more effectively the complex interrelationships involved, and enhance our practice and understanding.

Florence Grant holds a PhD in History from King’s College London and is currently an independent writer and editor based in Western North Carolina, USA. With Ludmilla Jordanova, she is co-editor of Writing Visual Histories (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Ludmilla Jordanova is Emeritus Professor of History and Visual Culture at Durham University, UK. She is the author of History in Practice, 3rd Edition (Bloomsbury, 2019) and co-editor of Writing Visual Histories (Bloomsbury, 2020).