What Is an Image?

"proliferation of imagery"
 "that's the image he constructs"
 "she is worried about her public image"
 "it's what I imagine"
 "I created an image"
 "you're the spitting image of your mother"
 "what great use of figurative imagery"

While considering my primary linguistic associations with the word "image," there are common themes of repetition, imitation and construction that emerge. An image somehow takes the connotation of a certain falsity; a thing, idea or identity that lacks connection to "the real."

 However, it is this concept of "reality" that complicates the notion of the image as false. As I walk through the world, isn't what I perceive simply a series of images? On a biological level, I am affected by my poor eyesight and profoundly lacking peripheral vision (which affects the shaping of my "frame"). On a psychological level, all that I perceive is analyzed according to my experiences and associated emotions. My reality, or I'll call it my mobile series of images, is entirely different from anyone else's.

 This makes me want to free the "image" of my tendency to ascribe to it the "false." If the image finds its origin in an unstable definition of reality (in the sense that each person has his/her own), than it is no less "true" than what I call the "real" sky I see above me.

 It is important to acknowledge that this rudimentary analysis connects image and simple perception. When "extreme" imagery is considered (that of our technological era), a less pacific conclusion is reached. When images become so central to identity construction through social media (Facebook, twitter, instagram), what happens to the self? Can external preoccupation find harmony with the internal or is the obsession with sheer "image" driving the victims of our generation towards a place where they hardly know themselves outside of the construction? At the dinner table, has the group of girls ceased to discuss the present self in favor of taking series of snapshots of all that is around them (not before perfecting them through filter, of course)? When the image of the decadent cocktail is consumed with more vigor than the drink itself, what does that indicate?

 As Guy Debord writes in Society of the Spectacle, "all that was once directly lived has become mere representation." Are we ourselves becoming mere images? A tragic thought to end on.