America in a Visual Century

Abstract

While we are poised on the edge of a new visual century, this essay looks back through the eyes of a Jewish woman who could clearly recall the 19th century. At midcentury this immigrant, who remembered Rumania of the 1890s, was most struck by wrestling on U.S. television. In her time, and since, the numbers of visual media have expanded, from early flickering black and white films to holograms and “virtual reality.” Words remain our most important symbols, but they are merging with other ways of presenting information. In a way, we are all immigrants in our own time.