Image Science

Thirty years ago, W. J. T. Mitchell’s "Iconology” helped launch the interdisciplinary study of visual media as a central feature of modern humanistic study. Among the themes and problems that grew out of that now-classic work are the pictorial turn, the image/picture distinction, the metapicture, and the biopicture.These key iconological problems imply an approach to images as objects of investigation--an "image science.” In the title essay to this bracing new collection, Mitchell speculates on where such investigation might lead were it indeed "scientific.” For example, if it is the case that images are indestructible (only a picture--the physical support of the image--can be destroyed), what happens if we pursue the metaphor of a physics of the image? Is it subject to a "law of conservation” similar to the one that governs matter and energy in the physical world? Likewise, could there be a "natural history” of images built around a metapicture of images as organisms or life-forms? "Image Science” is a collection that looks both backward and forward.The first essay recalls the emergence of iconological thinking in the 1980s, while others ponder the future of realism in the age of digital photography, engage current debates around the philosophy of Jacques Rancière, and consider the way spaces are occupied in contemporary popular uprisings.