texts

Lux format understands perception and visuality as philosophical problems that extend from epistemology to the anthropological conditions of imagery. How can the relationship between the visible and the meaningful be described?

What and how do we see when we see ‘something’?

This question touches upon the deepest layers of visual perception and can serve as an conceptual anchor in our engagement with the senses.

On an ontological level, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz formulated an even more fundamental question in his „Principes de la nature et de la grâce” (1714):

“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
(“Pourquoi y a-t-il plutôt quelque chose que rien?”)

In this question, a profound sense of wonder is expressed at the mere existence of our world – or of anything at all. Few other questions are so simple in their wording and yet so radical in their implications. It is so fundamental that it resists any definitive answer – and yet, to borrow the words of Martin Heidegger, it can mark the beginning of foundational thinking.

Even if one had good reasons to doubt traditional ontology, as did the later Maurice Merleau-Ponty or the structuralists, one would pause here –.

If we preserve this sense of wonder and turn our attention to the foundations of visual perception we arrive at the initial question:

What and how do we see when we see “something”?

It points to the most seemingly obvious and everyday act of our perception – and dares to question it.

This is precisely what lends the question its force. It compels us to ask under what conditions something can be considered visible and intelligible in the first place.

Once we have clarified what constitutes our view we can begin to address further challenges – such as what makes an image and what eludes representation.

The epistemic authority of visibility and the question of the medium.
Why photography?

“Our concepts, too, are often like optical lenses that distort or refract the image of truth.”

(„Auch unsere Begriffe sind oft wie optische Linsen, die das Bild der Wahrheit brechen oder verziehen.“)

Johann Heinrich Lambert, Neues Organon (1764), Teil IV: Phänomenologie oder Lehre vom Schein, § 823.

Photography is a threshold medium. Its multilayered nature makes it particularly apt for exploring fundamental questions about our perception and construction of our world, image theory and visual culture.

The message of photography does not lie in what is shown. Photography oscillates between surface and depth, between evidence and interpretation. Does this mean that the medium has a special epistemological or aesthetic position within the visual arts?

Photographs often carry an aura of authenticity - sometimes also mystery. As such, the medium is often attributed exceptional qualities on a rational level, which, however, rarely support fundamental questions (such as apparent objectivity, capturing the moment, etc.).

Yet photographic images also move us emotionally and in a particularly ‘inner’ way. There is a suspicion that photography tends to depict pictorial phenomena more vividly than other media.

The following qestions can illustrate this idea:
What are the trigger qualities of a sujet that prompt us to ‚take’ a picture? Or:
How can the experience of evidence when viewing a photograph be explained?

At this point, good explanations tend to remain provisional in nature:

The trigger qualities of a sujet are those aspects that spark the photographic impulse – usually a combination of visual, emotional, and narrative factors.

The experience of evidence when viewing a photograph is what makes us believe we are seeing ‘truth’: we experience a moment of coherence, a feeling of certainty – not just an image.

Phenomenologically considered, both responses reveal a kind of inner, meaningful event: even before any evaluation, something is taken as 'true' - an event of 'taking-for-true' (Für-wahr-Nehmung) occurs.

Photography holds the potential to engage with philosophy, both on a preliminary and a deeper level. However, it holds no inherent qualitative advantage over other media or art forms.

The discourse surrounding photography offers rhetorical frameworks that readily lead us to questions of perception, aesthetics and epistemology. The medium can challenge us to reflect on how perception is constructed and how knowledge is formed. The following questions can be informative:

What and how do we see when we see ‘something’?
What makes an image – and what eludes representation?
What is a medium, and what does it show?
How are narratives formed?

From the Mind’s Eye to Migrating Images: On the Nature of Imagery

The research project “Mental Images” investigates the role of the mind's eye in the intersection between individual experience and cultural narratives. Mental images are understood as culturally shaped, technically mediated, and bodily anchored phenomena that serve cognitive, emotional, ethical, and identity-forming functions.

The study aims to address a central research gap: the lack of an integrative theory that systematically links individual mental images, shared mental images, external pictures, and the formation of significance.

The project combines philosophical analysis with artistic practice, particularly photography, to explore the generation, circulation, and reception of images. It examines questions such as “What is an image?” and “Where do images exist?” in both material and mental contexts. Artistic practice functions as an experimental and reflexive tool, testing how visual constructions mobilise, modify, or generate mental images, and how inner and outer images interact.

Problematisation and Research Question

The investigation of visuality, and in particular of inner images, provides a key point of access to understanding the interrelations between individual experience and cultural narrative. Mental images operate as mediators between personal perception and socially embedded meaning by linking individual emotions, positions, and memories with collective symbols, myths, and stories. This dynamic becomes especially evident in the visual arts.

Photographic works such as Jeff Wall’s and Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s conceptual “made realities”, as well as iconic documentary images like Thomas Hoepker’s View from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, toward Manhattan, 9/11, evoke mental images that are grounded in a culturally acquired visual vocabulary. At the same time, these photographs draw upon mental images and place them in resonance with their environment.

In this interplay — so the thesis advanced here — inner images generate and preserve meaning for both individuals and communities, while also pointing to relations between personal experience and cultural narration. The central research question guiding the proposed project is therefore: “How do mental images reflect the reciprocal interactions between individually lived subjectivity and cultural narratives?”

This investigation derives its relevance from the fact that it examines the concept of the image beyond both a media-oriented and a one-dimensional cultural perspective. Instead, visuality is approached as an anthropological fact. The project follows the thesis that inner and outer images refer to one another (Belting, Mitchell), move, and continue to evolve (Mitchell).

Through analysing the conception and reception of visual artworks and visual phenomena that precede art, such as constellations in the night sky, it aims to generate insights into how individual and collective identities are shaped, affirmed, or questioned by mental images.

A current and productive challenge lies in delineating a clear concept of mental images. The project therefore also seeks to advance an understanding of the fundamental function of visuality in human experience and in cultural practices, and to reflect on its significance for philosophical aesthetics, philosophical anthropology, political theory, and economic thought.