Image theory

What are pictures? How do they differ from words? What exactly are pictures today , in a time when the power of the visible seems greater than ever before and when the pictorial turn has replaced the linguistic turn ?

WJT Mitchell, one of the pioneers of Visual Culture Studies , poses these questions in a series of groundbreaking essays that are already considered classics of image science research. They examine the interplay of the visible and the sayable in all cultural areas, from literature to the visual arts to the mass media. Fundamental theoretical texts from Pliny to Foucault are analyzed in detail, as are numerous products of high and everyday culture. In the course of these analyses, the question "What are images?" is transformed into the question of who they actually are: What is their fascination, why do they speak to us so strongly and often irresistibly? Why do we behave as if images were alive, as if they had the power to influence us, to demand things of us, to convince us, to seduce us, or simply to mislead us?

Despite its outstanding importance for international image research, Mitchell's works are still little known in this country. None of his books are yet available in German.

This volume closes this gap and offers new impulses for the local debates about Gottfried Boehm's Iconic Turn, Hans Belting's image anthropology and Horst Bredekamp's reformed art history. The selection documents Mitchell's most important contributions from the last 20 years, starting with his book Iconology from 1986 up to his most recent publication What do pictures want? from 2005.