On Seeing - Things Seen, Unseen and Obscene
Sight is almost unanimously regarded as the sense most vital to our day-to-day survival and awareness of the world around us. It is also the sense that dominates our subconscious and our dreams, and from the earliest efforts in the arts, painters and sculptors have explored the boundaries between these two states. Looking at mythology, history and science, from Actaeon's illicit glimpse of the bathing Diana in the Roman myth to 18th century France, when two voyeurs sparked a bloody antiroyalist riot on the Champs-de-Mars, through to modern-day advances in microscopy and photography, Gonzalez-Crussi surveys the ways in which, through the sense of sight, perceiver and perceived are inextricably joined. With its spectacular breadth, insight, wit, and fascinating detail, "On Seeing" is a vastly entertaining book that enlarges our awareness of the world around us.