Seeing Matters
A Psychology of the Image and Its Politics
Published on 19. March 2026
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-009-27207-0 (ISBN)
Description
In Seeing Matters, Sarah Awad offers a psychological exploration of how images shape our actions, perceptions, and identities. She examines how we use images to symbolically and materially influence the world, others, and ourselves, while also revealing how the images around us shape our thoughts, emotions, and memories. Awad investigates the social and political dynamics of visual culture, questioning who is seen, how they are portrayed, and why these representations matter. By using clear language and real-world examples, she makes complex theories accessible to readers, offering diverse methodological approaches for analyzing a wide range of image genres - such as graffiti, digital memes, photojournalism, and caricatures. This comprehensive analysis addresses the politics of visual representation, making the book an essential guide for researchers across disciplines, while providing valuable insights into how images impact society and our everyday lives.
Reviews / Votes
Seeing Matters is a masterful exploration of the pervasive power of images. With keen psychological insight, Sarah Awad reveals how the images we create and encounter shape our minds, emotions, and the very fabric of our shared reality. Vlad Glaveanu, Professor of Psychology, Dublin City University 'The powerful role of images in everyday communication has been amplified by the expansion of visually focused social media and other platforms. Sarah Awad's engaging book is a crucial resource for analysing the role of those images and for thinking more deeply about their social life.' David Beer, Professor of Sociology, University of York, UK 'We live in cultures characterised by abundant, efflorescent, fast-flowing images. We make them, share them, scroll past them, dwell on them. Awad shows us how to follow the social lives of images so that we can keep sight of how they matter. Against the temptation to see an incomprehensible glut, we are reminded that images move evermore to the centre of how we affect each other and work out shared social realities in our public and intimate lives.' Nicholas Carah, author of Media & Society: Power, Platforms & Participation 'Images don't just reflect the world; they shape it. In Seeing Matters, Dr Sarah Awad examines the creation, circulation, and transformation of images, revealing their role in shaping cultural emotions, social relations, and collective action. Combining interdisciplinary theory with insightful methods, this book is a pathbreaking analysis of contemporary visual culture.' Alex Gillespie, Professor, London School of Economics, UK 'I am deeply impressed by Sarah Awad's comprehensive study of the power and use of images and her command of 20th- and 21st-century theories. Especially potent are her nuanced analyses of images of suffering and death that circulate in the news, digital media, and urban environments. Her questions about the ethical purposes of such images should make us all pause.' Deborah J. Haynes, author of Bakhtin and the Visual Arts and The Vocation of the Artist 'The book offers a highly engaging roadmap to consider practices of 'seeing' from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It is especially effective in drawing attention to the interplay between social and psychological processes in perceiving, understanding and consuming imagery.' Josephine Hoegaerts, Professor of European Culture after 1800, University of Amsterdam, the NetherlandsMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
549 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-27207-0 (9781009272070)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
03/2026
Cambridge University Press
€60.80
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Sarah H. Awad is Associate Professor of sociocultural psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark. She received her Ph.D. in cultural Psychology from Aalborg University and her M.Sc. in social and cultural psychology from London School of Economics and Political Science. She studies processes by which individuals make sense of change through visual and narrative tools and the influence of visual culture on identity, collective memory and politics within a society. She has coordinated different art facilitation programs and public service visual campaigns in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program and the British Council. Her most recent co-authored books include Remembering as a Cultural Process (2019), Street Art of Resistance (2017), and The Psychology of Imagination (2017).
Content
Part I. The Image and What We Do With It: 1. Why a Psychology of the image?; 2. Theoretical conception of the image; 3. What we do with the image; Part II. The Social Life of Images: An Analytical Framework: 4. The birth of the image; 5. The body of the image; 6. The Environment of the image; 7. The viewing of the image; 8. The development of the image; 9. The death and after-life of the image; 10. Concluding thoughts - The mattering of the image; Appendix I.