In this book—part walk through art history from the Stone Age to the early twentieth century, part Marxist discourse on class-based power relations—the eye is posited as an organ that has developed its particular capacity for seeing over time, and in relation to the material conditions that determine how we look. Our “visual consciousness” (“świadomość wzrokowa”—a phrase often repeated in Theory of Vision) is related not only to the natural environment in which we find ourselves, but also to cultural processes and social structure. In his introduction, Strzemiński continues, “In addition to the passive physiological reception of visual sensations, there is the active, cognitive work of our intellect. There is the mutual influence of thinking on seeing and seeing on thinking. Thinking poses questions for seeing to answer.” Seeing becomes ever an interpretive act, embedded with bias, and reflecting a “truth” that is not outside of the influence of history and the specific economic, social, and political structure of a place.