Images: from images of what is invisible to images that cannot be seen

 Paul Dumouchel

I am interested in how the production and dissemination of images using digital technologies (understood in a broad sense) and these technologies themselves transform our image of the world. The fact that the word “image” appears twice in the previous sentence and in two different meanings is no accident. The plurality of meanings of the word “image” is very ancient. It is already present in “idea” the Greek word for image derived from the ancient Greek verb idein that means to see. Idea for us no longer as the meaning of an image and only refers to an invisible immaterial concept. To see however, still also means to understand, in many languages, not only in some that are closely related, like French, English or Italian, but even for example, in Japanese.

I want to see – to understand – how images relate to concepts and how this relation has changed with the introduction of new technologies of image making. What interests me is the relationship between the different types of material images that we make and thinking, or if you prefer, the relationship between the images we make and our understanding of the world. This is not the relation between material images and “mental images” as psychologists usually understand this last term, but rather between the images that are material objects and invisible immaterial thought. I will focus on only two aspects of this complex relationship. One is how we resort to images to make visible what is invisible and how this particular relation has changed with the rise of new technologies of image making. The other is how the new technologies that allow us to make images transform our relation to the world. In both cases, what is at stake is the ability of images to reveal the truth about the world. If you prefer, what is involved is their truth value.

In both cases – that of images that make visible what is invisible and that of images that cannot be seen – we need a starting point as reference to describe the relevant changes in the images we make. The 20th as the century of photography will provide that point of reference.



The 20th century

Its importance comes from that the 20th photography both constituted a sharp break with what had gone before in relation to images and second because what happened then to image making was in many ways the continuation and the culmination of a development that had been going on for centuries. The 20th century was, as far as images, are concerned the century of photography, of cinema and later of the television. It is true that photography started somewhat before in the second half of the 19th century, but all three technologies really came into their own in the 20th. Beginning towards the end of the 19th century, the world, our social life, was inundated by an extraordinary quantity of new images compared to what existed in the previous centuries. Photography became a common place activity, one that was more and more accessible to everyone. In books and textbooks photos began replacing illustrations, drawings and engravings, while in the cinema, alongside films of fiction and entertainment, new genres appeared: documentaries and news reels which progressively moved from the theatre house to everyone’s home taking the name of news cast and live reporting or live TV. These images, in part because of their sheer number and the ease with which they could be produced, transformed people’s relation to images and to the world. More precisely these new media and means of producing and reproducing images gave prominence to one particular dimension of images. These progressively more and more common images corresponded to one way in which images had been used until then, but which previously had only occupied a limited place in social life.

That one way is of faithfully representing (some portion of) the world, and of representing it as it is. That is to say, became prominent images that claimed to represent truthfully and objectively what they are the image of. A function that in the past had been fulfilled by portraits of living persons, paintings of famous places, panoramas and monuments, as well as by scientific drawings or engravings, especially of plants, animals or parts of the human body. That was, however, the function of only one type of images limited to a large extent to scientific and professional domains. Other images like scenes from the Old Testament or portraits of saints long dead or paintings of ancient battles could not pretend to such an objectivity. Their relation to truth was different. It was either symbolic or one of illustration. In the latter case, the representational dimension of the image was generic rather than particular. A person or character, for example Augustine or St.-Peter, was represented as an elderly man. And if the image could be considered true to the saint, it was not true to the particular person. It did not look like the person it was deemed to represent, or at least we had no way of knowing.

The many different images that began to inundate the social world at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were different. They shared three important and closely related characteristics that perfectly fulfilled some objectives and ideals of representational painting. First, these images were considered truthful, truth-functional one could say. That is, they were considered to reliably represent what they were the image of. They were considered to be true to what is. That truthfulness of the image was understood as a consequence of the technology used to create them. Images produced by an apparatus – the camera – that merely records what is do not lie and, it was thought, could not lie. (Remember that the name “camera” sends back to a much older technology, the “camera obscura”, that had now been used for centuries in painting to perfectly reproduce landscapes or sceneries.) Photography’s fidelity to what is was thought to result from the fact that these pictures were produced by a photo-mechanical process. That was seen to provide two great advantages over drawings or paintings: speed and objectivity. Even early photography the daguerreotype took less time than drawing and of course than painting. Objectivity which was associated with science and learning.

These advantages led to their being preferred to mere written reports as a source of information. (Note that even today we can recognize the same evaluation of automatically produced images. For example, in the use of body cameras for policemen or dashboard cameras for car accidents. Such mechanical recordings of what happened are privileged over written reports because we assume that they do not lie, also because we think that they give us an objective view of the point of view of the police officer whose action are being called into question, the image is assumed to reveal to us the point of view which the officer would have had, since the images were taken from where he or she was.)

Second, the truthfulness of these images, their fidelity to what is was thought to imply that they were immediately readable. That they could be understood by anyone simply by looking at them, just as is the case of any natural scene we observe. These images were considered to be in principle evident and therefore did not require any explanation. They gave the person viewing them, the evidence of being there. As the saying goes, “an image is worth a thousand words”, suggesting that these images had a further advantage over the written word, which is that they were both evident and immediately clear. There was no need for long, complex, and often obscure explanations, the image speaks for itself and by itself.

These two closely related characteristics implied a third one, which is that these evident and truthful images do not change the world. Unlike an illumination or decoration, a photography simply records what is going on. It does not add or subtracts anything to what is for either aesthetic, religious or ideological reason. Their primary goal is not to embellish or to educate, but to report. Photography, news reels, live TV reporting or pictures in newspapers, just like the picture of your lover, parents or of family meeting merely revealed what is. They did not change anything. The images were neutral. They did not take side relative to what they represented. Taking an image with such a device left the world as it was, it did not change it.

The power of these images came to a large extent from those 3 qualities: truthfulness, evidence (readability) and neutrality. And these three characteristic to a large extent still set the stage for how we understand images. Images speak to all – they are evident – and they do not speak for anyone in particular – they are truthful and neutral. Through the image it is reality, the fact themselves that are speaking. If the publication of such images can lead to changes in the world, it is not because the images themselves change anything, but, on the contrary, because they reveal the truth, because through these truthful images people became aware of something that they did not know before.

Of course, as we all know that things are not so simple, that these 3 characteristics that we like to attribute to photo-mechanically produced images are not necessarily the case. To the opposite, numerous books have been published and many analyses written explaining and illustrating how images, photos, films, pictures are or can be used to distort reality and to promote specific goals. To show that the images in the media are neither neutral nor evident and that they can lie. All these essays aim to teach us how reality can be photographed or filmed in ways that bias what the pictures or film seem to report and to show how it is possible in this way to instill false beliefs in the viewers. How the images can lie.

This common and commonly justified criticism, however, precisely proves the point that I am trying to make. The fact that so many books and articles, documentaries and programs have been produced to demonstrate how images can lie, to denounce those who manipulate them for their own advantage, or to inform us of the different techniques used and the extend to which we can be victim of these “doctored” images, indicates that we spontaneously assume that these mechanically reproduced images are evident, neutral and truthful. The fact that we need to be “educated” in order to perceive or simply to suspect that these images can be deceptive is proof that we naturally or spontaneously tend to see them as evidently truthful. The fact that we consider that deceptive images to have been “doctored” or manipulated to prevent them from revealing the truth of what happen or of what is, also implies that a transparent relation to the truth is characteristic of what we think these images are and should be.

It is important to realize that this way of seeing images and of understanding their role and function is very different from what was the case before. Though some images had always been taken as representing reality, what this meant even in such genres as portraits and landscapes, was rarely simply an exact truthful reproduction of what the image was the image of. Only scientific drawings beginning in the 16th century were understood to be guided by the 3 objectives of being truthful, evident and neutral. Apart from those, the making of images was guided by different other goals.

Most images were images of what could not be seen. Images of saints, of Christ or the Virgin, images of Greek gods, scenes from ancient mythology or of the Old or New Testament, paintings of imaginary cities or landscapes. These were not visual copies of what existed, even when for example, the image of a saint, was the image of someone who once had a physical appearance. However, if they were images of what could not be seen, they were not images of what did not have any possible visual appearance. Even in the most extreme case, images of God the Father, are images of what at the end of time will be seen, at least by those who are saved! Therefore, these images were images of what could not be seen for contingent, rather than for essential reasons.[1]

However, the world that those images represented was not the world that everyone saw, nor was it the world in which people lived, the world that they naturally perceive. To put it otherwise, the role of images was not to represent the world as it appears to us, but to make visible and present what was neither visible nor present. In this way the images participated in creating a different world. Their function was not to make some aspect of the world visually accessible to those who had been momentarily absent – here is a picture of last week’s party – but to make visible what was absent, what could not be made present otherwise than as an image.

To put this in the terminology of C.S. Pierce theory of signs, most images then were not “icons” but “indexes” or “symbols”. An icon resembles that of which it is an icon – the drawing of a fire to signify “fire”. An index entertains a normal and known (Pierce said a natural) relation to what it is an index of – smoke indicates the presence of a fire. A symbol is arbitrary, it neither resembles nor is linked by a natural relation to the object it signifies but signifies through a systems of signs – for example an X over the image of the fire to signify that you should not make fires. Unlike images in the previous centuries which were mostly indexes and symbols, the new mechanically reproduced images that invaded the world during the 20th century claimed to be icons.



Images of what is invisible

I name “images that are not images” strange visual objects that are not properly images, but that nonetheless present themselves as or claim to be images understood as icons. They are strange, not so much because of the way they look, as because these visual objects claim to be images, while they actually are visual representations, of what is not visible. They are images of things, phenomena, and processes that are invisible. They are to be understood as visual representations of what is not visible. They are neither illustrations nor illuminations, they are not decorations, nor do they claim to be pictures of fictional or of long disappeared historical characters. They are not representations of things that do not exist. Rather they are understood to be visible renderings of aspects of material objects that are not visible, that are properly invisible. Further, these visual representations are considered, at least to be guided by the three objectives of being neutral, truthful and evident pictures of what they present.

These “images that are not images” are visual representations that claim to be icons of something material, but of an invisible aspect of a material object. That of course, from Pierce’s point of view seems impossible. Since an icon by definition resembles that of which it is an icon, something cannot be an icon of what is invisible. To put it otherwise, it cannot resemble what has no semblance. The question then is: Can an image resemble that which is invisible – rather than merely symbolize it or be an index of that which is invisible? What would it mean to say that an image resembles that which is invisible? What do we mean when we make such a claim? Nobody thinks of that the images I will soon present are symbolic and if sometimes we may be tempted to view one as an index rather than an icon, that is generally because the image is not clear enough, because it lacks precision. In consequence it appears more like a trace than as a representation. That implies that we expect the images to be truthful, evident and neutral.

Furthermore, what these images claim to be visual representations of is of essentially, rather than accidentally, nonvisible aspects of what they are images of. To the opposite, objects such as, for example, what is too far away or too small to be seen or hidden in a dark cave or at the bottom of the ocean are not essentially invisible, but only accidentally invisible. Because no matter how difficult it may be to reach to them, in order to see them or for them to become visible, all that is necessary is to be close enough and to shine a light on them. Such things are not invisible in principle. It is not impossible to see them, it is only by accident or for the moment that we cannot see them. In themselves, they are perfectly visible. However, the images that I call “images that are not images” are different.



Consider brain images taken by a fMRI machine. That is using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging technology which allows researchers to safely, painlessly and non-invasively observe brain activity. It is a brain imaging technology that detects brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow. Actually, what it measures more exactly are changes in the movement of water which is taken to be indicative of blood flow. In fact, there are some discussions among specialist as to how this data is to be interpreted.[2] To be even more precise what the machine monitors is the resonance time lap of the protons of hydrogen atoms. Nobody and nothing sees or shines a light directly inside the brain of the patient. Unlike what is the case when using a traditional light microscope, or during an autopsy no one is looking inside the head, no light enters there to reveal what can be seen. What happens is that a strong magnetic field is created around the patient’s head in consequence the protons of hydrogen atoms align themselves, then a radio signal that disrupts their alignment is sent and when the protons bounce back (that is re-align themselves) they emit a radio signal that is picked up by the machine. How long the protons take to bounce back is considered indicative of changes in the distribution of water, indicative also of the thickness and distribution of cellular tissue.

All that the machine picks up, the only data that it receives in order to make an image of brain activity are the radio signals indicative of the protons’ realignment. This constitutes the sum of empirical information that the device gathers from its observation of the patient. That represents nonetheless a very large quantity of data. This data now needs to be organized, formatted, cleaned up. The essential hypothesis is that the spatial organization of the parts of the brain will reveal its structure and functioning. On the basis of this very large quantity of data and many specific hypotheses and complex theories concerning the behaviour of water molecules in brain tissue, others concerning what we know the structure of the brain and its normal activity, as well as appropriate computer programs an image of the observed brain activity is constructed. These are the images with which we have become familiar, and which generally (as above) use a colour code to indicate active regions or areas where there could be a tumour.

These images are considered by physicians and surgeons, who for the most part do not know very well how fMRI functions, as faithful. That is as indicative of the brain regions where the activity is going on or where there is a lesion. The images are viewed as authoritative and as evidence (and to those who have been properly trained they become evident). They are authoritative and evident in the sense that they are used as guide for diagnostic or surgical interventions. These images can further be shown in 3 dimensions allowing the doctor “see” the topology of the brain and its internal structure. They make the brain transparent, so to speak. These fMRI images and other imaging technologies allow us to “see” the inside of things with minimum disruption and to discover their fine grain structure.

What are those images, images of? The apparently evident answer is that they are visual representations of the brain, of its inner structure and of where brain activity is taking place. Since brain activity takes place all the time and everywhere in the brain, what is meant here by “brain activity” is activity linked to various specific tasks. It is important to note that these still images, in spite of appearances, are not snap shots. They are not like the photograph of a tree or of a person waving goodbye. They are more like long term exposure pictures of traffic moving at night. In those images the individual cars have disappeared and all we see are red and white lines which the succession of the passing cars’ head and taillights has created. Similarly, the fMRI in order to make an image collects data over a significant periods of time – seconds or even minutes – during which time brain activity is continuously taking place, all this activity is then compressed, collapsed or concentrated into still pictures, which may be different because of what we want to highlight, but in all cases, they correspond to long term exposures.

Given these images lack of evidence and neutrality how is their claim to truth established? What convinces the viewers that the images are faithful to the world, and not just an illusion or artefact? (Note that this is not an entirely new question. Since Galileo’s use of the telescope, it has been repeatedly raised concerning visual access to the world through tools and instruments.) Philosophers of science generally rightly answer that it is through comparison between different ways of assessing the object that the truth value of artificially produced images is determined. For example, it is by comparing our hypotheses concerning the fine structure of the object and the results obtained using scanning tunnelling electron microscope that we determine the value of the image.

Formulated in this way, the answer though correct remains incomplete. What ultimately convinces scientists of the iconic, veridical, evidential and objective dimension of “images of what is invisible” is that the images themselves and their meaning are the result of public discussions between members of communities of scholars. Discussions that are public, public in a sense close to the idea of “common knowledge”. Something is said to be common knowledge not only when it is known to everyone but when it is also known to everyone that it is known to everyone. Similarly, discussions about the value of such images are public not only in that they are open to all those involved in the process of their production, but also in that this is known by all to be case. It is, in a sense, the agreement of experts that determines the truth value of the image. But that agreement is not a simple “yes or no” affair, it is not an agreement that is reached once and for all. Rather it is a dynamic process that remains open to challenges, even if the dimensions of the openness to challenge change as time goes by.

One characteristic of “images of what is invisible” is that unlike a painting or a normal photograph they are not and cannot be produced by one individual alone. Making such a picture necessarily is a social process. Social not only in a technical sense, given that their production involves complex machines and equipment controlled by many technicians. Social also in that the images only acquire their status as trustworthy documents through a dynamic collective process of discussion and assessment (that cannot really be separated from the technical aspect).



Images of what is not

Important differences between ordinary images as we knew them in the 20th century and how we experience them today result from the social use of ICT and other digital technologies. Mainly they come from the sheer number of images available and the ease with which anyone can produce, reproduce, use, reuse and modify existing images, and disseminate them in extremely large quantities. In consequence, unlike what was the case, say 50 years ago, images that we produce and those that we find everywhere publicly reproduced cannot anymore be considered to have the 3 characteristics of being truthful, evident and neutral.

50 years ago, anyone could make a photo-album, or make movies (and a little later videos) of trips and family events and that possibility was both new and incredible. That level of production of images does not however in any way compare to today’s situation. Back then taking a picture was something you did with care because film were expensive, somewhat difficult to change and allowed only a limited number of pictures. With one film you could take 8, 12, 24 or at most 36 pictures and that was it. So, you would be very careful about what you shoot because you did not want to run out of film. Furthermore, the images were not immediately available. You had to bring the film to a specialized store and then wait anywhere between 24h and week before you could see the pictures you had taken. Pictures were fragile and copies were not easy to make.

Today this has completely changed. Among other things because the internet actually is a very large and powerful reproduction device. (What is the most unlikely feature of the Star Wars movies scenario? – apart from the fact that starships fall down when they are hit as if they were a plane in the sky or a sinking boat!) Whenever you communicate on line, a copy of what you sent is made, or rather as many copies of the text or images are made as there are recipients. In principle there is no limit here. Furthermore, a trace of everything that happens on the net is created. So that anything that goes or is done on the internet can be found, nothing can be definitely deleted and entirely hidden, at least from those who have the right knowledge and equipment. Yet nothing is properly public on the internet.

Why? Because in digital space, contrary to physical space, presence is not reciprocal. In physical space if I am present to you, then by definition you are present to me. In order to escape from this reciprocity of presence we must resort to special means, for example, hide behind a curtain. In digital space, even if all action necessarily leaves a trace, that trace does not constitute a presence for anyone, unless special measures are taken in order to discover the trace or make the person present. There is no evidence attached to any action that is made in digital space. That action is not and cannot become known to others unless someone take special measures to make it so. That is why digital space is not a public space.

This may seem strange, because one of the frequent criticism that ICT threaten to destroy private life by making public, or rather known to others, everything about you, your private messages and photos, who you have been talking to, the sites you visited, the kinds of books you read, your political and sports interest, anything and everything that transits through digital space can be known because it inevitably leaves a trace that can be retrieved. However, physical space is naturally or if you prefer is by itself a public space, because anything that happens in physical space is in principle accessible to anyone who is present there. Given the reciprocity of presence in physical space anything that happens can immediately become « common knowledge » to those present. What is public is not necessarily known by everyone, rather is public what can be known by all and of which it is known by all that it can be known by all. Everything that happens in physical space has that structure. Even what is hidden, reserved, or made private is done so publicly. We build walls, we close doors, we put signs that say, « no entry » or ask people to leave. Publicity is a structural characteristic of physical space. In order to escape this publicity, we need to take special measures.

Digital space lacks the structure of reciprocal evidence that defines publicity. Nobody knows from the simple fact that she or he accesses digital space whether or not her or his presence is known by anyone and if it is known by who. No one knows either if what he or she learns or discovers in that space is true or not. That is to say, if it corresponds to anything and to what outside of digital space. What comes to us through digital space does not have any particular or specific evidence. It does not have any self-evidence. Unlike what happens in physical space, nothing here offers any guarantee of the truth of what happens in digital space. The content of an internet page does not have any self-evidence. In consequence, nobody can know for sure who sees or can see whatever he or she posts on the internet.

Today, anyone can take hundreds of picture with his or her smartphone, see them immediately, and just as soon distribute them to hundreds of persons. Pictures for us are inexpensive, they are easy and fast to take, and one can rapidly, easily and cheaply make as many copies as one wants. We are inundated by images because they are free, not only financially, but also in terms of time and effort. When personal computers and the internet were first introduced their use was understood to be essentially related to texts, to writing, reading, sending and receiving written message. However, due among other things to the exponential growth in data storage capacity, today images are everywhere. Social media are unthinkable without them. Not so long ago “You Tube” would have been impossible, an open channel where anyone can post anything, and where anyone can become famous and rich if enough people are interested in whatever it is you post. Was also unthinkable the fact that maps would be accompanied by images of what the map was a map of, as is now possible thanks to Google’s alternative “street view” or “satellite view”. What has changed is not only the quantity of images, but also the growing number of types of images and of “views” these represent.

In consequence of the ease and speed with which anyone can produce, reproduce and post them, the function of the “neutral”, “truthful”, and “evident” images, of the icons we make has changed radically. Before, personally taken pictures for the most part fell under the two categories of celebrations and of memories. People took pictures of important events and of moments they wanted to remember. Of course, many of the pictures we take still play those roles, but images have also, perhaps primarily, become a means of communication. Instead of collecting pictures and films in special albums and protected boxes, as precious object to be exhibited sporadically on special occasions, to selected others. Images are stored on a smartphone to be shown to anyone at any time, for any reason. We also send pictures to others immediately after taking them to say, “look where I am!”, “see the cake I just made”, “don’t you love this dress” or “me all dressed up to go to graduation”, and so on. Rather than memories these images are ephemeral visual traces of our ongoing actions, illustrations destined to those who cannot be present. Selfies are a clear example of that. Of these pictures we can make an unlimited number of copies or delete them just as easily. In themselves they are not precious objects. They will only sometimes become important, precious or damming, through the response of others. Thus, the importance of the number of “like” and “dislike” they receive which for many is what determines the value of the picture.

In this process, the picture transformed into an illustration loses its qualities as an icon. It ceases to exist as an image of what it is the image of. Paradoxically perhaps, the automatic means of production of the image which previously was considered as a proof that the image is true to the world, is now one of the main reasons why the images we take have lost the three qualities of being, truthful, evident and neutral. Like its ancestor the “camera obscura” the classic camera took advantage of a physical process that could not be modified to ensure the faithfulness of the image. Digitalized pictures are freed from the rigidity of that process. Even a low-quality smartphone offers you a number of filters to enhance and modify your pictures, while a computer “photoshop” opens a complete world of possibilities, allowing one to radically transform any picture. While traditional photography was interested to capture aspects of what is, today’s images aim at illustrating an event, a moment, or a mood, not at representing the world.

Images when they are used as illustrations of ongoing action also have a different relationship to time, they tend to become as fugacious as time itself. When an image gives itself as an immediate witness of the present, rather than a memory of the past, it loses its relationship to the future. We tend to think of images as memories as being essentially related to the past – which they are – but that is a partial description of their role and of what they are. Images of the past make the past present for the future. The picture that a person takes of an important event to keep as a memory (as a sign or document) is not for the present of when that picture is taken, but for the future, a future that is open and unknown but that the image of the past tries to constrain or to relate to the past in some way. To the opposite an image that is the mere reproduction of the present in itself has no more future than that present itself. In most cases, it is doomed to disappear, just like the action it seeks to enliven, to which it aims to give more reality by transforming it into an image. Images of the past are not only images that were taken or made in the past, but images that for some reason we, who live in that past’s future, consider as an interesting depiction of some aspect of that past. Images as memories corresponds to aspects of the past that we want to keep for the future. Illustrations of the present have no more future than they have a past.

It is not only the case that many more images are now available than before, but also that the nature of private and of public images have changed. Not so long ago the thinking and strategy of the media, of publicity and of all who made public images was dominated by the saying that an image is worth a thousand word. Today we are obsessed by “fake news”, by the fact that neither images, nor texts can be taken at face value. One way thinking of this difference is that before, at the moment of the rise of mass media images were understood as windows that gave a view on the world. Of course, images were also used in propaganda, they were manipulated and made to lie. But that was more difficult to do then. It was not open to everyone, and it was considered as a form of abuse, a perversion of the true nature of images. Images did not lie unless they were forced to. Today transforming an image to make it say something different from the reality it comes from is considered normal and an advantage. That is why we have all those filters, photoshop and so on. In consequence, images are now best understood as a screen. Not as windows on the world, but as a flat surface on which flash in a chaotic and disorganized way different topics and interests. Images do not reflect the world anymore, rather they illustrate various details and aspects of the world that are important for those who make the image.

The culture of images has changed over the last 50 or 60 years. While they used to be seen as a vehicle for truth, we now feel the need to apologize when they are true, warning viewers that they may find some of the images offending. Interestingly it is essentially when they report real events, rather than in situations of entertainment that such warning are made. That is to say, it is when they reveal a reality that disrupts our normal presuppositions about the order of the world and challenge our prejudices that we are told to beware of images, and not when they present to us what is not.






[1] The visual representation of an abstract concept is a different issues.




[2] D. Le Bihan (2012) Le Cerveau de cristal. Ce que nous révèle la neuro-imagerie, Paris : Odile Jacob.