What is an Image?

Google definitions describes an image as a "simile or metaphor". This description is the perfect way to conceptualize an image. An image stands as a visual simile or metaphor for the reality that it represents, no matter how literal or abstract. Whether this reality is something in the physical world, a moment, a sensation, or simply an emotion. An image is how our mind's eye conceptualizes these and presents them to ourselves in a way that our mind can process through vision. 

An image is also a highly personal relationship that we have with an image long after we look at it. In this example, we are discussing an image of an image. In this instance, we each have our own personal image in our minds eye, our own memory of the image. At this level of such an intangible concept, it becomes whatever your intuition makes it to be. Basically, an image is a visual representation or manipulation of reality, on any level, whether it be physically manifested by painting, sculpture, photography, or even dance. And then how we recall this image personally, is another level deeper into the concept of the image. On this level, one's understanding and memory of an image is completely dependent upon the individual's subconscious, of which it is created. So an image can be both an item with more universally recognizable characteristics, meanwhile an image of an image brings the definition to  a much more abstract place within the individual subconscious.