image

An image is a poetic device serving two main functions. First, an image is a description so vivid as to leave the reader with an actual sensory image in their mind. Second, it can be intended to make the reader picture or feel something associated with that which is described; i.e. the image connotes something more than just its own concrete depiction, is a simile or metaphor, or symbolizes something. In many cases, these are combined; images are intended to have some sort of sensory impact on the reader, whether overt or not.

Images are typically thought to create a visual representation, but this is not always the case. While this is the most common usage, skilled writers may use imagery to establish a full description by appealing to any or all of the senses.

Usually an image is a single representation; the system of images throughout a work, or the use of such a system to create a sensory environment, is called imagery. If one image is repeated over and over, that is called a motif, or, if slightly altered and built on throughout the work, an extended metaphor. A writer will typically use imagery or motifs to establish a level of meaning besides the superficial in their work.

Images are nothing like objects. They are like ghosts, they are pale, mysterious representations; they lack any sense of dimension. They are satisfyingly empty; we can project our own impressions upon them, and they become personal, beautiful. They become extensions of ourselves. You can lend them depth through your own contemplation, or they can continue to be frivolous, silly pieces sitting there for their purely superficial value. Images are weightless. I find this very soothing. They take up absolutely no space in our junk-filled world and yet continue to be perfect and a canvas for our admiration.

An artist is somebody who wants to turn the whole world into images but usually ends up making more objects instead.

Andy Warhol thinks it all comes down to images and nothing but images. His art couldn't care less about what's beneath the surface. To him, nothing could be more corny than agonized anguished art that seeks to uncover hidden depths. He finds this pretty foolish and contrived.

People find the world to be radically deficient. And therefore images never satisfy them. They always want more. But Warhol just shrugs his shoulders and suggests that enough is enough. The world for him, is not deficient but if anything, overly full and junky.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and that's the literal truth. I could spend hours gazing into a crisp, flat image, and creating spatial pretenses in my own mind, smelling scents that do not exist, tracing the curves of objects that simply aren't there; maybe they never existed at all. I always wondered why I found buying expensive fashion and photography magazines so engaging and fascinating, and why tearing the pictures which pleased me out and collecting them seemed like a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon. Now it has come to me: they can sometimes tell many more stories than a book. And the best part is.. the stories come from your own crazy, feverish, dizzy-with-the-colour-pink-and-umbrellas-and-seascapes-and-other-things mind. The image merely provides the scenery or atmosphere. It's a teensy backdrop for your own tired imagination.

Im"age (?), n. [F., fr. L. imago, imaginis, from the root of imitari to imitate. See Imitate, and cf. Imagine.]

1.

An imitation, representation, or similitude of any person, thing, or act, sculptured, drawn, painted, or otherwise made perceptible to the sight; a visible presentation; a copy; a likeness; an effigy; a picture; a semblance.

Even like a stony image, cold and numb. Shak.

Whose is this image and superscription? Matt. xxii. 20.

This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Shak.

And God created man in his own image. Gen. i. 27.

2.

Hence: The likeness of anything to which worship is paid; an idol.

Chaucer.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, . . . thou shalt not bow down thyself to them. Ex. xx. 4, 5.

3.

Show; appearance; cast.

The face of things a frightful image bears. Dryden.

4.

A representation of anything to the mind; a picture drawn by the fancy; a conception; an idea.

Can we conceive Image of aught delightful, soft, or great? Prior.

5. Rhet.

A picture, example, or illustration, often taken from sensible objects, and used to illustrate a subject; usually, an extended metaphor.

Brande & C.

6. Opt.

The figure or picture of any object formed at the focus of a lens or mirror, by rays of light from the several points of the object symmetrically refracted or reflected to corresponding points in such focus; this may be received on a screen, a photographic plate, or the retina of the eye, and viewed directly by the eye, or with an eyeglass, as in the telescope and microscope; the likeness of an object formed by reflection; as, to see one's image in a mirror.

Electrical image. See under Electrical. -- Image breaker, one who destroys images; an iconoclast. -- Image graver, Image maker, a sculptor. -- Image worship, the worship of images as symbols; iconolatry distinguished from idolatry; the worship of images themselves. -- Image Purkinje Physics, the image of the retinal blood vessels projected in, not merely on, that membrane. -- Virtual image Optics, a point or system of points, on one side of a mirror or lens, which, if it existed, would emit the system of rays which actually exists on the other side of the mirror or lens.

Clerk Maxwell.

© Webster 1913.

Im"age (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Imaged (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Imaging (?).]

1.

To represent or form an image of; as, the still lake imaged the shore; the mirror imaged her figure.

J. Warton.

2.

To represent to the mental vision; to form a likeness of by the fancy or recollection; to imagine.

Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore, And image charms he must behold no more. Pope.

© Webster 1913.