Image Text Music - Catherine Taylor

In Image Text Music, writer and editor Catherine Taylor delves into the fascinating convergence of visual and verbal communication. Drawing inspiration from Roland Barthes’ seminal 1977 essay collection Image Music Text, Taylor uses Barthes’ title as a playful launching point for her exploration of image-text works and the potential music that arises at their intersection.

Rejecting broad claims about medium or genre, Taylor offers nuanced observations that highlight the specificities of individual works. Throughout the book, she uncovers ways of reading that are both erotic and political, familiar yet disorienting. Taylor poses a thought-provoking question: As we navigate between linguistic and visual modes of meaning-making, what is the purpose of reinventing forms if not to transform our ways of living?