LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IMAGE

‘There was “magic” as long as poorly-equipped humans were reliant on the mysterious forces that annihilated them. Later, there was “art”, when things that depended on us were at least as many as things that remained independent. The ‘visual’ began when we acquired sufficient power over space, time and bodies to no longer fear their supremacy.’ Régis Debray traces a history of the inexhaustible power of images and vision in the West by identifying three different ‘eras’, and by using the apparatus of philosophy, history, anthropology and archaeology. Debray reinterprets the role of the image and its medium from its original connection with death and absence, as far as the new age of the videosphere and digital technology: “Here, art history has to step aside in the face of the history that made it possible: the look we give things that represent other things.” Introduction by Marco Pierini.