We live in a predominantly visual era. Vastly expanded quantities of imagery influence us on a daily basis, in contrast to earlier days where the textual prevailed. People no longer document their lives with diaries or letters. The increasing producing and reproducing of images continuously compete for our attention. If so, can we speak of an expanding visual culture? If there is an increasing production of images, does this mean that other cultural products, like first-hand experiences, are being superseded?

This research questions if a Bilderatlas as an alternative tool in art education might help students to become critically towards their dominant visual culture.

The concept of visual culture is analyzed through two different perspectives; one in which images have become predominant within culture. This premise argues that the impact of quickly moving and changing images has beclouded writing and reading. The other perspective argues that visuality – by way of moving images – require as much imagination on the part of viewers as their literary counterparts do.

In order to examine the phenomenon of the Bilderatlas, three consecutive examples of the use of an Atlas have been explored. Firstly, the Mnemosyne Bilderatlas of Aby Warburg, who intended to present an alternative art history. Warburg created his Bilderatlas by arranging and re-arranging images in juxtaposition, explicitly leaving space between the images in order to provoke discussion. Secondly, The Arcades Project of Walter Benjamin, which shows how a disjunctive narrative of collages fosters critical thinking. A last example of the use of an Atlas is the artwork Atlas of contemporary artist Gerhard Richter, which is used as an instrument of collective memory.

To test the ability of the Bilderatlas to develop criticality and to evaluate and review how image-montage with a Bilderatlas may offer new perspectives, several experiments have been conducted. These experiments have lead to an exploration of different Pedagogies, such as Spectacle Pedagogy and Rhizomatic Pedagogy, which help to offer new perspectives and trajectories of learning. To use the Bilderatlas as a tool to develop criticality towards visual culture, I developed and tested a new pedagogy; a Pedagogy of Difference and Repetition, based on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Where Repetition offers the possibility to change the perceiving mind, Difference emphasizes the interstice between images, so that something new emerges.

External critic: Paula Roush (artist, researcher, and senior lecturer at the London South Bank University)