2014

We need pictures to create history, especially in the age of photography and cinema, but we also need imagination to re-see these images, and thus, to re-think history Georges Didi-Huberman

What came first, the world or its image? In order to answer this question, we are led towards the genealogy of the image. And if the world has always been an image, as philosophers have stated time and again, then our search reaches to infinity. But, we can solve several visual puzzles along the way, adding to our understanding of the world we live in.The first cave images were probably our early known attempts in being able to image and eventually decode the images we imagined of ourselves. Studying them is visual archeology. Where did our image come from? Perhaps it was then that we discovered our first visual genome. Its genes contained DNA made of light - or mirrored from light - an illusion. By drawing on stones, we fixed the illusion of sight perceived in our imagination. A few millennia later, we fixed this light on paper and metal plates - photography came into existence.the still images shocked the world.they bore the greatest resemblance to the illusion our eyes were able to see, yet they had nothing to do with reality.they created a world of their own.

Because pictures create their own consciousness of the world, I wonder if the time has come to stop focusing on the connection between images and the “real world”. Maybe we need to explore the visual components of the world by looking into the image itself - just like in scientific research. We need to study images, the connections between them, their characteristics, and especially their origins by looking at them directly and not in constant comparison with reality.this may allow us to discover the infinite possibilities that are hid- den in images. My relationship with the image is like being on a space odyssey, in search of understanding image formation. And since an image is part of the imagination, unlocking the code will allow us to see beyond our own reality. Maybe we have entered an era where images can be unfixed, bound no longer to paper or screen, liberated from time, floating freely in our imaginations.

Image editing, for example, allows an image to change from one form to another.the 24 still images that make up one second of video can also be rearranged and displayed so that the first image becomes the 24th, and the 24th can become a part of another time constellation, creating a new story or reality. When these images are moved out of their original sequence, they have travelled in time. Images constantly time travel, or to be more precise, images can go from one state to another at any given moment.

...

Download PDF