What is an Image (RL)

I think an image is something different from the visual perception of the world that we constantly experience. The word “image” implies a kind of authorship: namely, that someone has edited it from the stream of experience because they thought it was important in some way. This editing can take place in any number of media: painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, writing (in the abstract,) digital imaging, anything that transforms the raw matter of life into a new thing. As an image can exist in any number of media, it can also serve an infinite number of ends, from self-expression, as in art, to selling products, as in advertising. The sum product of these disparate ends is what could be called our society’s visual culture, the images that define who we are and how we see ourselves.