Sets of stereographic images, and the stereoscopes needed to view them, were ubiquitous objects in Victorian drawing rooms. In Techniques of the Observer, Jonathan Crary refers to the stereoscope as a “quintessentially nineteenth-century device” (59) that operated in a very different way from earlier technologies including the camera obscura.

I recently asked some friends what they would grab from their houses if it was on fire and they had only three minutes to escape. This question has intrigued me for some time. I can’t remember when I first thought of it—or maybe it was put to me at a dinner party by a host desperate to get things rolling. Regardless, I am curious about what people find important, and this question speaks directly to the issue. It is, too, I confess, a self-serving question, as I am trying to figure out what is important to me and am hoping someone will help me down that path. Anyway, my friends on this afternoon answered typically. Of the four, three said they would grab the family photographs. The holdout said he’d reach for his guitar. Guitars aside, in my unscientific poll, most people say they would most miss their photographs if all their belongings were irretrievably lost.

Finally, a symbol so clear, so convincing, so telling of the state of the arts today that even the ostriches with their heads in the sand can see it. Hitler, yes the Hitler, is hot as hell.

Since at least the announcement of the Daguerreotype in 1839 by the medium's original self-promoter Louis Daguerre, the medium of photography has been a cultural and technological phenomenon in a modern world. Photography is and always has been a powerful force in people's lives, and never more so than today. Images are tied to culture, are in our DNA, and have become inseparable from politics, economics, and social issues. Photography comes to us in 2009 with a rich and complex history, and photographic images are born into a world that gives them context and meaning. Images have become the ultimate mass media, crossing language barriers and being transmitted to the furthest corners of the planet in fractions of a second.