This book is about the expanding realm of visual culture from architecture and art to computer imagery and virtual reality. Visual Culture is also about visual culture studies, a relatively new academic discipline that scholars employ to analyze visual artifacts. Unlike many other texts on the same subject, it places the "visual" in the foreground and is systematic and accessible. This volume provides an overview of the subject that pays attention to the achievements of both traditional and new theory while directing the reader to a large body of literature through an extensive bibliography. John Walker and Sarah Chaplin discuss the concepts of "the visual" and of "culture" and the origins of visual culture studies, models of production and consumption, the canon and concepts of value, visual literacy and poetics, modes of analysis and new technologies.