Flusser 3X in Afterimage

Afterimage reviews two books by Vilem Flusser (Into the Universe of Technical Images and Does Writing Have a Future?) as well as Vilem Flusser: An Introduction.

Flusser_writing coverThe Electronic Mediations (EM) series of the University of Minnesota Press has issued a welcome three-pack of titles by and about Vilém Flusser. The series of volumes (numbers 32, 33, and 34) form a triad and complete a double set of Flusser's previously published books that once stood in somewhat lonely isolation in English philosophical literature. Volumes 32 and 33 of this new set complete Flusser's writings on the technical image that began with Towards a Philosophy of Photography (Reaktion Press, 2000); and also constitute a third set of Flusser's work in the EM Series, including EM Vol 6, Flusser Writings (2002). If there's a trilogy among these double sets of threes, the constant base arises from the recent EM volumes reaching back to the previous publications. Towards a Philosophy of Photography finally has companions in print with Into the Universe of Technical Images and Does Writing Have a Future? With this trilogy, we are able to complete the arc of Flusser's ideas on the far-reaching consequences of photography on culture, communications, and thought. Ironically, the end of the three-part run is capped by an implied beginning, Vilém Flusser, An Introduction (hereafter, Introduction), the critical overview that a growing number of Flusser readers have been waiting for.

Published in: Afterimage
By: Chris Burnett