Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

“The significance of the image as revealed in the process of scanning therefore represents a synthesis of two intentions: one manifested in the image and the other belonging to the observer… While wandering over the surface of the image, one’s gaze takes in one element after another and produces temporal relationships between them.” Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography. Flusser’s example of how photographic meaning is made (through embodied engagement such as the saccade) is limited to an individual image, but also works when applied to aggregations and multiples of images. Each new image seen becomes part of an idiosyncratic yet shared system - one in which meanings pile on top of, rest alongside, or burrow within each other to form new types of pictorial vernacular. This paper will explore intentional and unintentional processes of meaning making through image aggregation.