"Visual culture is new precisely because of its focus on the visual as a place where meanings are created and contested… Just as cultural studies has sought to understand the ways in which people create meaning from the consumption of mass culture, so does visual culture prioritize the everyday experience of the visual, from the snapshot to the VCR and even the blockbuster art exhibition. If cultural studies is to have a future as an intellectual strategy, it will have to take the visual turn that everyday life has already gone through."

-- Nicholas Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual Culture