The Inception of the Image

When did we make the first image? Was it two hundred years ago, when Niépce made the first heliograph of the view from the window at Le Gras? Was it sixty-four thousand years ago, when neanderthals hand-stenciled the first paintings in Maltrevieso cave? Or was it the moment we first thought in pictures; the first mental image; the first time we imagined, instead of seeing? 

To make an image is simply to take some part of our world that you saw, and make what it looked like, yourself, so that you can see it again. Centuries ago, with nothing but hands and clay or stone and paint, we first learned to take a part of our world and re-make it ourselves. Before we first painted a boar on the walls of a cave, we thought of a boar not only by its visual appearance, but by its entire presence, face-to-face – the way it looked and sounded, breathed and moved – everything it presented to us. We couldn’t think of a boar only in the abstract; only as what it looked like; we had to think of that time when we had experienced its presence. The moment we could re-make what it looked like as a painting, the boar could become something else. We could see it, even out of its presence; painted on the walls of the cave, or projected in our mind’s eye. We could think of it, not exactly as we had experienced it, but as a visual abstraction. No longer could something we had seen exist to us only as we had experienced it in the world. It could now exist to us as an image.

From the moment we first sculpted a human figure, we changed what it meant to be a person, literally. We could use that word, “person,” to refer to a living man, or to a heap of clay. We could point at a sculpture and call it a person, or point at a painting and call it a boar. Anything we saw could become an image. Anything we saw, we could make ourselves. After seeing a boar, we could see it again by painting it, even before a real one presented itself out in the world again – we could present it ourselves, re-present it, remake it, as a representation.

Image Reproduction and Consumerism

There have been many evolutions to the technical task of image creation. Significant evolutions include the mass production of coins via printmaking, the rise of private patronage of art in the renaissance shifting dominance from public murals to individual, movable property items in the form of oil paintings. These exemplify the commodification of images into individual articles as expressions of wealth. A current example is the development of artificial perspective using scientific processes to create images depicting real things from a humanly inaccessible perspective, marrying science and imagination and separating imagination from creative production. 

These shifts in image production mechanisms affect the element of artist labor, both physical and creative. As images become easier to produce, and further mass-produce, these images become less valuable under Walter Benjamin’s conception of artist labor as the process by which art is imbued with meaning. This perspective is reiterated in modern discourse through the dominant concept that AI art, produced relatively without human labor, is “soulless”. 

When analyzing these evolutions, it is important to avoid characterizing development as linear. Labeling the past as “traditional” or “ancient” and present as “modern” or “postmodern” is arbitrary, that key hypothetical moment in which image production and circulation changed mechanically, radically altering culture, has happened repeatedly throughout history and shall certainly re-occur, and progress does not erase production styles of the past. 

Media theorists apply moral judgements to these advancements, the default position being that mass production is destructive to the soul of the image, decrying many or most modern images as “kitsch” with only aesthetic value. A rebuttal lies in the national differences in image production, despite global access to the same or similar technologies. This demonstrates that the human element guiding the tools is still reflected in the final image, reaffirming a human-centric assessment of image value.

Thus, in an oversaturated world of image-production, the key human interaction from which to ascertain value is the second human transition in mediation: audience reception. An image is valuable for its capacity to elicit a passionate response. There are three active roles in the process of mediation: the artist/author, the image/media, and the audience. The mediation of images is bookended by human influence on both sides of the interaction.

The Paradoxical Relationship of Power

A theme within Wells’ text is the paradoxical relationship between media, images and consumers. He discusses contradictions, situating an image’s status as being everything and nothing. An interpretation of Wells’ arguments follows this paradox, looking at an image’s relationship to power. This paradox stems from an individual’s perception, the resemblance of images, and the relationship between progress and crisis. 

Looking at perception, Wells understands images as tangible objects that can be destroyed and as indestructible impulses of the mind. He argues that the mind can be regarded as a medium for image production, developing the underlying power of the image. He states that images and their power depend on the minds that perceive them and that “alongside images in media we have images of media that we internalise as subjective pictures of our own processes”. This physical process of image consumption is what creates an internalisation of their underlying ideological message. He quotes Hansen, who states that the perception of images can no longer be regarded as physical surfaces but must be seen as a process where information embedded is perceived through embodied experience. 

When looking at Wells’ definition of image as symbols of visual resemblance, there’s a focus on resemblance as the source of this “power”. The closer an image gets to a resemblance, the more powerful the reception is on perception. A resemblance is seen as the embodiment of God on earth or a connection that creates an emotional response.

When looking at images through the scope of consumption, one understands how imagery becomes idolatrous in this nature of resemblance. Images become a resemblance to ideological positivity and communal conformity. He mentions this point when relating images to crisis, where images spread faster when tragedy strikes and fear grows, contrasting the positivity in commercial ideology. In connection, Wells, with his paradox of the academic, sees the image as a constrictive way to reincarnate the masses into “ancient idolaters”. Images reduce individuals to irrationality and mass ornamentation, where the idol becomes consumption and is revered the same way an ancient worshiper sees drought as a message from the Gods. 

When placing the image under this scope of a reverential idolatry, the paradox of power becomes the longing for subversion and a rejection of it. Subversion becomes an inevitable process of fetishising images, hoping they guide individuals on what to think and how to act in ideological comfort. The paradox thus falls to the point of progress. Wells argues that the relationship between humans and images flares up during innovation. Especially when technology challenges the status quo. When new forms of image production emerge, their manipulation affects us like “microbes… infect(ing) the minds of consumers,” leading us to become scared of new idols and forms of subversion we enjoy. Societies take innovation as an organic inevitability when they create their own subversive power. Wells argues that if man was created in God’s image and was destroyed in man’s image, then it makes sense that man brings the end of man and image with the creation of something more powerful, like AI.

Manipulation Through Image

Images, especially photographs, gain this power throughout much of our modern society. They are often represented as explicit truth. This notion allows those in power to manipulate public perception by taking advantage of images. There is a certain image, that I find, represents both manipulation through the actual doctoring of images, and using iconography as a means to show political power. Raising a flag over the Reichstag. Is a photograph taken on May 2, 1945, which shows a soviet soldier flying the Soviet Union’s flag over Berlin after the defeat of the Nazi party in the Battle of Berlin. The image follows the classic imagery of victory in combat; the flying of a large flag, remnants of imagery that were popularized from imagery of the French revolution, for example Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. 

One interesting thing about this photograph in particular is that the image that is more prominent is the doctored version of the image. In the original photograph, one of the soldiers is wearing two watches, suggesting he looted one of them off of a fallen soldier. Obviously this could cast a shadow on the victorious moment the image was displaying.

I think this image is a great real world example of how images can be used politically to present a certain idea. While also giving us an example of early image manipulation, something that has remained so prevalent, especially with the added, modern context of digital manipulation.

More recently the funeral of Charlie Kirk, ran rampant with all sorts of religious, and American iconography. As a viewer, this event came off as a tacky attempt of manipulation through images. A man carrying a large cross would be a physical feat with obvious biblical ties, if not for the wheels located at the base of the cross. This being said, the privilege of studying media theory is not lost on me as I see the direct influence these images have been having on a large base of the American public. Reproductions of biblical images, being directly associated with politics, a direct opposition to Exodus 20: 4-5, has a major influence on the opinions of an extremely large number of people.

Contributors: Daniel Schatz, Django Mavis, Sydney Wilkins, Matthias von Loebell