Abstract:
This article presents some early reflections from a cultural historical project on the visualisation of
reading practices. The focus is limited to images of people reading. The pervasiveness of such
images in popular visual culture is illustrated, and how this relates to the established tradition
amongst Western artists to paint the image of the reader. A number of scholars have contributed to
the image of the reader in art as a field of study, all confirming the particular significance of
depicting woman readers in Western art. The current investigation asks how, from our vantage point
in the South, the representation, or non-representation, of readers in Africa, specifically southern
Africa, stands within, or in opposition to, or in conversation with, the canonised tradition in Western
art. The appropriation and negation of Western artistic conventions in the popular proliferation of
visual images are also being considered. For the South African discussion, the artist Gerhard Sekoto
is highlighted, and some of the contexts which helped shape his visualisations of people reading are
being traced.
