Sage Publications Visions of Modernity: Representation, Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Camera

This overview of modern visual culture explores the relationship between technology, society and identity which underpins contemporary `media culture′. While tracing historical shifts as they have developed through, or intersected with, different camera technologies, the book is not so much about the camera′s field of vision: it is concerned with processes of modernization and the dramatic changes - perceptual, experiential, epistemological - which characterize modernity. Using the camera and its technologies as symbols of `realism′, Scott McQuire interweaves: the history of visual culture from Lumiere to virtual reality by way of photography, cinema and television; the broad social and political transformations of the last 150 years; the ambivalent relationship between `image′ and `reality′; and the changing relationships of time and space, particularly related to colonialism, globalization, the modern city and cyberspace available in every home. Review `McQuire has produced a comprehensive and lucidly written account of the camera-driven transformations across the period we may now retrospectively call "modernity"′ - Victor Burgin, Unviersity of California, Santa Cruz `Visions of Modernity offers an admirable overview of modern visual culture. But, more than this, it takes us through a wide range of debates in cultural theory. McQuire has produced an encompassing, and very impressive work of intellectual synthesis′ - Kevin Robins, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne About the Author Scott McQuire completed his PhD in the Politics Department at the University of Melbourne in 1995. He has a strong interest in interdisciplinary research and has lectured in disciplines including politics, sociology, cinema studies, art and architecture, and media and communication. Scott has held a number of research fellowships including a visiting fellowship at the Department of Film, Theatre and Television, UCLA (1998), an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (1999-2000), and a visiting fellowship at the Celeste Bartos International Film Study Center, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000). He returned to the University of Melbourne to help establish the Media and Communication Programme in 2001. He is an active researcher who has been a Chief Investigator on six Australian Research Council funded projects. He has also received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, and has undertaken research consultancies for the Communications Law Centre, the Australian Film Commission and the Australian Key Centre for Media and Cultural Policy.