Unflattening: Thinking Through Images

The primacy of words over visual images has deep roots in Western culture. What if the two are inextricably linked, equal partners in how humans think? In his graphic novel Unflattening, scholar and cartoonist Nick Sousanis weaves together diverse ways of seeing, drawn from art, literature, movies, and scientific illustrations, to make the case against what he calls 'flatness' or the fixed viewpoint. Using the collage-like capacity of comics, Sousanis demonstrates that perception is always a process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points.