ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses why having a good understanding of visual images, as they communicate and disseminate the world for us, is vital for Social Work. Visual images need to be of interest to social workers not only because they can express pain when nothing else is available. Visual images are a form of human communication, but they are a particular, and powerful, form of human communication that needs to be understood more closely if we are to use them ethically and for social change. The chapter excavates the epistemological and ontological foundations of the professional discipline of Social Work. Visuality as it has come to dominate is part and parcel of Western modernity; part of the epistemological origins and the ontological, material ones. Social workers are exposed to and use images in their work every day.