Image: From Being a God[dess] to Become a Flatus vocis – Mitchell’s “Family of Images” (part 1)

Dorota Maria Kurażyńska, Juan J. Cabrera-Contreras

doi:10.37190/arc190304

Abstract

The subject of this work is the images, or more accurately said, the state of our knowledge about the set consisting of artifacts such as the Venus de Milo, the Gioconda, the duck decoys (or “fake birds”) used to hunt ducks, toys such as a doll or a paper airplane and drawings such as the planes drawn up by engineers or architects. Our purpose is to discuss the understanding of images currently considered canonical – i.e., the theory that states that images are a modality of signs. We will do this by analyzing “The Family of images” a proposal developed by W.J.T. Mitchell in a famous essay entitled “What is an image?”. After introducing readers to the subject and outlining a diagnosis about the current status quæstionis of theory of images, we will study Mitchell’s proposal and criticize the thesis (assumed and brilliantly presented by this author) that states that images are nothing more than a more or less sui generis modality of signs. Finally, in the section dedicated to the conclusions, we will outline a proposal of an alternative approach to the study of the images that, instead of seeing them as signs, considers them as tool-artifacts.