Offering an overview of modern visual culture, this book explores the relationship between technology, society and identity which underpins contemporary "media culture". The author examines: the history of visual culture from Lumiere to virtual reality by way of photography, cinema and television; the social and political transformations over the last 150 years; the relationship between "image" and "reality"; and changing relationships of time and space, particularly related to colonialism, globalization, the modercity and cyberspace in the home.