Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture Chapter One - Images, Power, and Politics

1. Looking itself is a social practice that involves relationships of power between the image itself, the one creating the image, and the person or people viewing the image. 
2. The image itself is a form of representation; the use of language and image to create meaning about the world around us. Representation is structured according to the language being used, the social, historical, and cultural conventions, and through the way an image is created (photography, painting, sculpture etc).
3. The Myth of Photographic truth is the use of photography and the paradox that is created through photography. A photo is an "objective rendering of the real world with unbiased truth". This statement can be challenged because a photographer makes aesthetic choices that can affect the way and image is being created. The meaning and expectation of the image is tied through the ways it is reproduced. Historical, cultural, and social context must be considered when viewing and creating an image.
4. Ideologies are a broad but indispensable shared set of values and beliefs through which individuals live in social networks. They can contain specific things about social institutions like medicine and law. 
5. When creating imagery, signs should be considered. Signs are clues that can be relevant to a specific social culture and are interpreted according to that visual cultures history and social constructs. Signs come in a few different forms, such as iconic or symbolic, but are signified by what they are connected to, for example the word dog would make someone think of the image a dog.
6. When creating or looking at art, the value of the image must also be considered. This again, depends on the cultural bounds this image is being created and viewed. The creator and people placing value on the work must be aware of its authenticity, where the image is being displayed (on the large scale of the country to the small scale as a museum or magazine).
7. Finally the Icon itself as imagery and how icon's make assumptions about cultures and mass production. How does an image, or a person, become iconic and in what way does this icon affect cultures beyond the culture the image is created in.