The Story of Looking

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE SOCIETY NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

Looking can be an act of empathy or aggression. It can provoke desire or express it. And from the blurry, edgeless world we inhabit as infants to the landscape of screens we grow into, looking can define us.

In The Story of Looking, filmmaker and writer Mark Cousins takes us on a lightning-bright tour – in words and images – through how our looking selves develop over the course of a lifetime, and the ways that looking has changed through the centuries. From great works of art to tourist photographs, from cityscapes to cinema, through science and protest, propaganda and refusals to look, the false mirrors and great visionaries of looking, this book illuminates how we construct as well as receive the things we see.

Brilliant and eclectic, The Story of Looking is a photo album and an art gallery, a road movie and a visual grammar: once you’ve read it, you’ll never see things the same way again.

In The Story of Looking, Mark Cousins takes us on a lightning-bright tour – in words and images – through how our looking selves develop over the course of a lifetime, and the ways that looking has changed over the centuries. From great works of art to holiday photos, from cityscapes to cinema, through science and history, protest and propaganda, and the refusal to look, this book illuminates how we construct as well as receive the things we see.