kiji W. J. T. Mitchell’s “Picture Theory”: A Toolkit for Image-Text Criticism
W. J. T. Mitchell's Picture Theory (1994) is a foundational text for visual culture studies. This analysis breaks down its 4 core concepts: 1) The "Pictorial Turn," which positions the image as a central problem, not an illustration; 2) The "image/text" trio (image/text, image-text, imagetext) for analyzing relations; 3) The distinction between the material "picture" and the virtual "image"; 4) The "metapicture" as a site of self-referential theory.