In this bold rewriting of visual culture, Brooke Belisle uses dimensionality to rethink the history and theory of media aesthetics. With Depth Effects, she traces A.I.-enabled techniques of computational imaging back to spatial strategies of early photography, analyzing everyday smartphone apps by way of almost-forgotten media forms. Drawing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Belisle explores depth both as a problem of visual representation (how can flat images depict a voluminous world?) and as a philosophical paradox (how do things cohere beyond the limits of our view?). She explains how today's depth effects continue colonialist ambitions toward totalizing ways of seeing. But she also shows how artists stage dimensionality to articulate what remains invisible and irreducible.

" "This scholarship illuminates a deeper understanding of dimensional aesthetics, computational imaging, and how we see and experience the world through photographic representation. It is, in my opinion, a triumph in the field of visual culture studies."
 " - Visual Materials Section of the Society of American Archivists

"Depth Effects presents a solid addition to the current literature on visual media studies, offering extensive theoretical depth, historical breath, and heightened awareness of aesthetic potential. Especially noteworthy is its comprehensiveness, which implies neither closure nor a definite conclusion; instead, the book extends an invitation to explore the many sides of other in/visible landscapes that Belisle has disclosed." - Film Quarterly