Walter Benjamin belived that the excitement of the flanuer, caught in the phantasmagorias of the modern city, was related to a new way of seeing.  During the nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization caused significant changes in society and culture.  Though this study is directed primarily at the United States, many of these currents were also apparent in Europe.  Work by scholars of European history and culture, greatly influenced scholars of American history and thus will be included this discussion. 

The work of Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault represent two related, but distinctly different takes on modernization in terms of what Martin Jay terms, ‘scopic regimes.’  Industrialization created a proliferation of new visual representations in the form of commodities leading to what Marx termed, ‘commodity fetishization.’  Rather than focus on the creation and distribution of these new forms of representation, many scholars have concentrated on the reception of images in a period of changing perceptions.  Shifting perceptions were the result of not only new forms of representation, but also to the demands of a new urban environment and interaction with new forms of mechanization and an increasing number of people, that redefined the visual experience of the nineteenth century subject.   Defining  changes in perception provides a lens for understanding changes in the social organization and cultural experience of nineteenth century Americans.

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