ABSTRACT
Alexis de Tocqueville implicitly shows us that there is a visual dimension to the politics of democracy. There are things about democracy that can be seen instantly and things that can only been seen with time. This chapter reflects on the visual politics of democracy through its troubled relationship with transparency and time in our own age. The visual politics of democracy should begin with the realisation that transparency only makes some things visible. While contemporary democracies have become no more transparent than the fledgling democracy Tocqueville observed almost two centuries ago, there is today a popular sentiment that, even at its worst, democracies are more transparent than they have ever been. Particularly in an age where vast amounts of information and images can be instantly accessed and transmitted with the touch of a screen, it has become easy to think that things are more apparent than they actually are.
