Into the Image

We are constantly being told that we are living through an image revolution. In this sceptical exploration of the politics of visual culture, Kevin Robins assesses the nature of our emotional and imaginary investment in the visual media from photography to virtual reality. He looks at how modern image technologies allow us to monitor and survey the ‘real’ world while maintaining a distance which somehow denies its reality and he asks what pressures lie behind the utopian fantasies of cyberspace with its alternative realities and virtual communities. Rather than accepting the fashionable idea that the new visual technologies are displacing the real, Into the Image examines them sociologically, as shaped by forces and events in the real world, and demonstrates that what continues to matter is the relation of image and screen culture to the way we interact with that world.