viz.

Lucaites at No Caption Needed has posted an interesting analysis of the recent dustup between the U.S. and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. According to Lucaites, the argument that the Bush administration has tried to make about the incident through the images—photos and video—released by the U.S., “relies upon two optics or visual logics, one drawing upon a Cold War consciousness and the other drawing upon the logic of the ‘suicide bomber.’ ”

Jezebel picked up on a story in the Washington Post and the The Daily Telegraph about the surprising shared cameraman (Nick Ut) behind the following well-known photographs:

The music video above is by Serj Tankian (lead singer of System of a Down) and directed by Tony Petrossian. Depending on your taste in music, you may want to watch it with the volume turned down.

Some feminists are all atwitter about Italian Vogue's questionable new "photostory," decrying it as a glorification of sexual violence in theatres of war. (And yes, the spread is pretty heinous on many levels.) But I'd like to submit that the American flags splattered all over these debauched, disturbing scenes function as a none-too-subtle criticism of our government's actions. What do you think?

Over at No Caption Needed, Robert Hariman pieced together a rather precise visual argument by sequencing a series of images from 9/11 and the war in Iraq. While we could spend many a blog entry on the imagery of terror and war or on the function of visual images in argument, the Hariman sequence seems to provide an excellent in-class opportunity to dwell on the different persuasive registers present in visual communication and political speeches that invoke the same imagery.