W. J. T. Mitchell

W. J. T. Mitchell’s “What Do Pictures Want?”: The Lives, Loves, and Agency of Images

W. J. T. Mitchell's What Do Pictures Want? (2005) follows Picture Theory by investigating the "agency" and social life of images. This analysis breaks down its 4 core concepts: 1) The methodological hypothesis of asking what pictures "want" to reveal power; 2) The "idol/totem/fetish" trio to analyze power and "iconoclasm"; 3) The interplay between the material "picture" and the fluid "image"; 4) The concept of "voicing" (who speaks for the image).

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.