New Book on Visual Culture of Shamanism from Richmond Professor  

Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture, Dr Max Carocci, has published a new book titled Shamans: The Visual Culture of Animism, Healing and Journeys to Other Planes. 

This groundbreaking work is the first to draw public attention to the visual dimensions of shamanic practices and beliefs across the world. Shamans explores how radically different understandings of reality—rooted in animism and spiritual experience—are expressed through visual codes and artistic symbols. 

By examining motifs and themes found in shamanic artefacts, Carocci reveals the richness of visual traditions that challenge Western distinctions between realism and abstraction, surrealism and naturalism. The book also exposes the limits of conventional analytical frameworks, inviting readers to reimagine how we describe and interpret visual expressions from non-European perspectives. 

In addition to Shamans, Carocci recently published an article in the Brazilian journal Notebooks of Art and Anthropology (Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia). Titled The Indigenous Observer, the piece analyses Native American representations of Europeans, contributing to a growing body of work on non-Western visual cultures—an area that has been central to Richmond’s curriculum in recent years, like in our MA Art History and Visual Culture.

Both publications reflect Carocci’s continued commitment to global approaches to visual culture and his exploration of how humans across the world visualise their experiences to create meaning and culture. 

“I hope these publications can help us reframe some of the core questions in visual culture,” says Carocci. “Do all humans see the same reality? If they do, why are their visual cultures so different from one another? What can non-Western visual cultures tell us about the ways we look at the world?