Includes bibliographical references and index.

Before photography -- Camera portabilis: god, space and optics--the visualisation of mobility before 1840 -- The nineteenth century -- The reverie of power: Victorian travel photography and the depiction of Egypt, the Holy Land and India -- Worlds in a house: the consumption of travel photography in the Victorian middle-class home -- Tourisms -- Paradox amusements: tourism and the modern image -- Travel products: promoting the tourist vision -- Sabulous: the beach, the camera and social display -- Fixing Arcadia: the photographic paradise -- Twentieth-century trails -- Neither here nor there: photographers, exiles, the faces of strangers -- Disappearance: twentieth-century photography, art and travelling.

This is a thoroughly illustrated study of the close and continuous relationship between two of modern culture's central phenomena: the photographic image and travel. Contributing to the growing literature of travel and its representations, the book argues that from its beginnings, photography has played a constitutive role in the formation of travel -- comparable in importance to its part in the portrayal of social identity. It shows how, in turn, travel has shaped the use and language of all types of photographic production.