Note on the digitized image

Abstract

This paper inquires into the statute of images and the relation of subjects to them, based on the consideration that we are invaded by images we consume and produce. The novelty of the digitalization of images is presented, whose consequence is the inscription into a real register, thus introducing a novel relation between the imaginary and the real. With digital images, the symbolic statute is reduced to the real. Based on Gérard Wajcman’s work The Absolute Eye, a question is raised about what the author calls “the wall of images,” referring to the ambition of science to see it all, to the omnipotence of the gaze as a universal eye.