About the IVSA

Photograph by Gabriela Fitz

The International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) is a nonprofit, democratic, and academically oriented professional organization devoted to the visual study of society, culture, and social relationships. IVSA membership is open to any person regardless of occupation, citizenship, or residence. The organizational membership represents a wide spectrum of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, education, visual communication, photography, art, journalism, and related fields.

The purpose of the IVSA is to promote the study, production, and use of visual images, data, and materials in teaching, research, and applied activities, and to foster the development and use of still photographs, film, video, and electronically transmitted images in sociology and other social sciences and related disciplines and applications. Such purposes include but are not limited to the following:

documentary studies of every day life in contemporary communities;
the interpretive analysis of art and popular visual representations of society;
studies of the messages, meanings, and social impact of advertising and the commercial use of images;
the analysis of archival images as sources of data on society and culture;
the study of the purpose and meaning of image-making such as recreational and family photography and videography.

The IVSA is committed to open and free intellectual discourse surrounding the visual representation of society and culture with due respect for the rights, dignity, and diversity of the human beings, organizations and communities thus represented. We uphold the standards of free speech and self-expression and academic freedom in the pursuit of knowledge through the variety of activities that are central to the work of our organization and membership.

The IVSA, through its publications, activities, and programs, supports the theoretical and methodological advancement of visual sociology as a way of examining and understanding the social and cultural world. We are committed to the development of a body of scholarship and knowledge that maximizes the potential contributions of the study of visual images and the visual representation of society. We are equally committed to scholarship and knowledge that contributes to the public good. We share with other professional organizations a social responsibility to strive to eliminate bias in professional activities, and we do not tolerate any forms of discrimination based on age; gender; race; ethnicity; national origin; religion; sexual orientation; disability; health conditions; or marital, domestic, or parental status.

Photographs in the navigation are, from left to right, by Dona Schwartz, Jerry Krase and Steve Gold.