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No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. By Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007; pp ix + 419. $30.00 cloth.
Although the case has been successfully argued for the utility and promise of a rhetorical approach to the study of visual images, such studies may still be regarded as exploratory in the sense that no dogma or dominant theorist dictates operative frameworks or methodological approaches. The interdisciplinary field of visual studies is still at an exciting moment, for exploration allows for stimulating conversations about potential perspectives applied to a variety of forms. One of the most recent books that makes an effort to shape that conversation is No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites. The book is actually the latest iteration of a series of presentations and publications that have occupied the authors during the past several years, although, through the authors' indefatigable research and intellectual curiosity, it is as much a coalescence of the state of collective rhetorical inquiry into visual images as it is an articulation of their own thesis on photographic images in the realm of public memory and consciousness.