Throughout the history of visual representation, questions have been raised concerning the supposed accuracy of the visual image, as well as its status in society. The popular notion that "seeing is believing" had always afforded special status to the visual image. So when the technology was invented, in the form of photography, the social and cultural impact was immense. In the mid-nineteenth century, the invention of photography appeared to offer the promise of automatically providing a truthful visual record. It was seen not only as the culmination of Western visual representation but, quite simply, the camera, functioning in much the same way as the human eye, was regarded as a machine which could provide a fixed image.

And this image is considered to be a very close approximation to that which we actually see. The chemical fixing of the image enabled the capture of what might be considered a natural phenomenon: the camera Image. At the same time, the photographic image was held to be an achievement of sophisticated culture and produced the type of image that artists had struggled throughout the centuries to acquire the manual, visual and conceptual skills to create. It may seem a further irony that, because of the camera's perceived realism in its ability to replicate visual perception, it was assumed that all people would 'naturally' be able to understand photographs.