Strange fascination: image in music and politics Part One

An artist like David Bowie is able to use images to create a remarkable bond between his own creativity and his audience. Those images primarily evoke feelings of pleasure but they also resonate with all kinds of social and even ideological concepts that we enjoy as part of the ‘pop culture’ experience. In this essay in two parts, LSE Media PhD student Ruth Garland explores the links between our experience of these kinds of images and political communication. With democracy suffering a crisis of confidence she questions the relationship between images and political meaning through the ages.