Vision has been a topic of much interest not only for geographers but also for philosophers, painters, photographers, filmmakers, art historians, and cultural theorists. Since vision is studied and understood differently by a variety of people, it should not be expected that its theoretical and material impacts could be experienced in a similar vein. Vision has long been a concern for ontology (the study of existence), epistemology (the theory of knowledge and its production), and methodology.

Modern Western society has held vision as the paramount sense called on to produce knowledge, suggesting that seeing means knowing. Geography has a long-standing relationship with visual culture and has often been called a visual discipline. The link between vision and order, classification, and description has heavily influenced geographic thought. ...