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Though On Photography (public library) - the seminal collection of essays by reconstructionist Susan Sontag - was originally published in 1977, Sontag's astute insight resonates with extraordinary timeliness today, shedding light on the psychology and social dynamics of visual culture online.

Visualizing Cultures was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto largely inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be). Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China. The thrust of these explorations extends beyond Asia per se, however, to address "culture" in much broader ways-cultures of modernization, war and peace, consumerism, images of "Self" and "Others," and so on. Images of every sort are introduced and examined here-in partnership with contributing institutions and collections, and with the collaboration of experts devoted to transcending the printed word and hard-bound text.