genealogy
Anna Näslund
I am professor of Art History at Stockholm University and researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. My research focuses on visual culture, picture theory and digitization. The project Selling Pic traces the genealogy of contemporary AI-generated image hype over 200 years of promoting technologies for the production, reproduction, and circulation of pictures on a mass scale. It aims to understand the historical role of pictures not merely as commodities but as agents of commerce. The project focuses on emerging picture techniques in the 1820s, 1920s, and 2020s, examining iconographic and discursive patterns in pictures of mass reproduction (metapictures) and comparing vernacular picture theories—expressed in advertising copy and trade journalism—with canonical picture theories. Rooted in historical material practices, the project seeks to clarify and expand our understanding of how and why pictures play a central role in the work of selling in modern and contemporary societies.
Selling pictures. Pictorial Economy and Commoditization 1820–2020
This project will place the current discussions concerning AI-generated images in a historical context, comparing it to two previous technological breakthroughs that have affected the use of pictures for commercial purposes.
The Frontiers of Sociology
2009. Brill. Table of Contents IntroductionPeter Hedström and Björn Wittrock: Frontiers of Sociology The legacy and frontiers of sociologyThe Emergence of Universalism: An Affirmative Genealogy Hans JoasTheThe Return to Values in Recent Sociological Theory Sociology and Political Science: Learning and Challenges Toward a New Comprehensive Social Science
