An Ecology of Images
The following extract is taken from the book Image Studies (Manghani, 2013). Drawing upon Susan Sontag’s enigmatic suggestion of an ‘ecology of images’, the article sets out what this might actually look like; to offer a tool for analysis that goes beyond semiotics.
In her seminal book On Photography (1979), Susan Sontag closes with the evocative idea of an ‘ecology of images’:
Images are more real than anyone could have supposed. And just because they are an unlimited resource, one that cannot be exhausted by consumerist waste, there is all the more reason to apply the conservationist remedy. If there can be a better way for the real world to include the one of images, it will require an ecology not only of real things but of images as well. (Sontag, 1979, p.180)
Sontag’s remark reflects upon the relationship between images and reality, which to this day is still frequently characterized in the terms of the Greek philosopher Plato, who advocated we ‘loosen our dependence on images by evoking the standard of an image-free way of apprehending the real’ (Sontag, 1979, p.153). The argument associated with Plato is that images are illusions; furthermore that the world revealed to us through our senses is only a poor copy of its true ‘Forms’, which can only be appre- hended intellectually.
Sontag was interested — albeit ambivalently — with the way photography came to overturn much of the Platonic philosophy about images and reality. ‘Cameras’, she writes, ‘are the antidote and the disease, a means of appropriating reality and a means of making it obsolete’ (Sontag, 1979, p.179). This is a topic all of itself, but the key point is that a so-called ‘ecology of images’ urges us to take images seriously as part of reality.
The powers of photography have in effect de-Platonized our understanding of reality, making it less and less plausible to reflect upon our experience according to the distinction between images and things, between copies and originals. It suited Plato’s derogatory attitude towards images to liken them to shadows [. . . but] the force of photographic images comes from their being material realities in their own right, richly informative deposits left in the wake of whatever emitted them, potent means for turning the tables on reality — for turning it into a shadow. Images are more real than anyone could have supposed. (Sontag, 1979, pp.179–180)
Interestingly, when returning to the subject of photography some thirty years later, in her book Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), Sontag is sceptical of her own idea. Commenting on the ubiquity of war imagery, she declares: ‘There isn’t going to be an ecology of images. No Committee of Guardians is going to ration horror, to keep fresh its ability to shock. And the horrors themselves are not going to abate’ (2003, p.108). In terms of a general ‘ecology of images’, we might suggest Sontag unnecessarily narrows down the concept. On the one hand, her lament for a ‘Committee of Guardians’ can equate with the point made in the introduction to this book that in being ‘astute, fascinated scholars of the visual aspects of the world’ we need equally to be ‘astute citizens in that world’ (Simons, 2008, p.78). In other words, there is a case for upholding certain political and ethical principles when dealing with images. However, the trouble with Sontag’s ‘Committee of Guardians’ is that, firstly, it suggests those ordained to undertaken this task are some kind of elite group; and, secondly, provides no clear sense of how and on what basis the ‘rationing’ of images would take place. Perhaps, then, it is more fruitful to think of images in terms of the richer meaning of the word ‘ecology’.
The term ‘ecology’, as a branch of science dealing with the relationship of living things to their environments, was coined by German zoologist Ernst Haeckel in the nineteenth century but has its roots in the long-standing tradition of natural history, dating from the work of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. The word ‘ecology’ has its root in the Greek oikos, meaning ‘house, dwelling place, habitation’ — the English prefix ‘eco’ also appears in ‘economics’, which of course can pertain to the running of a household as much as a national economy. Both terms ‘ecology’ and ‘economics’ resonate with each other, both concerned with models or systems of circulation and exchange. Aristotle studied the natural world as part of philosophy and as a pioneer of zoology is regarded as one of the first to apply an empirical and classificatory approach. It is important to note, however, with respect to modern ecology, Aristotle’s teleological view of the world (of designed and invariable types) hardly paid attention to the full range of reciprocal and dynamic relationships of organisms and their environments. In other words, ‘given his assumption of the eternal nature of species, Aristotle did not stress the adaptive character of fauna and flora, which is perhaps ecology’s cornerstone’ (Benson, 2000, p.59).
It is no doubt a precarious task to try to transpose ideas and terminology from a field of science such as ecology to that of image studies, not least because even within the field of ecology itself there have been numerous debates over its true focus and distinctiveness. Despite a classificatory and comparative mode of enquiry, for example, the roots of ecology are arguably as much ‘buried deep within natural history, [within] the descriptive and often romantic tradition of studying the productions of nature’ (Benson, 2000, p.59). However, as a metaphor for a desire to understand the interrelationships of things (the nature of change, adaptation and community), the classificatory, comparative and systems-based approach of ecology can be made pertinent to image studies, as it too seeks to locate how and why images operate in certain ‘environments’ or systems of meaning.
Typically, as a ‘life science’, ecology looks at key factors such as processes, community, distribution, abundance, energy, adaptation, and successions. These are all useful descriptors. So, how might they transpose upon an examination of images and the ‘image-world’ (to echo the title of a chapter from Sontag’s On Photography). Putting aside the use of ‘ecology’ in political discourse (evoked, for example, in reference to being ‘environmentally-friendly’, etc.), ecology is essentially the study of the interrelationship of organisms and their environment. As Putman and Wratten (1984) note, ‘[t]he very word “environment” conjures up an impression of a structural, physical “stage-set” upon which background biological processes are acted out’ (p.15). What we can borrow from ecology is a consideration of the fundamental elements that any organism requires in order to exist in a given environment. We readily talk about images in isolation, the way they look, their ‘power’ and meanings. Yet, no one image can exist on its own. Images are ‘environmental’ in that they must always have some context and be delivered via a medium (their ‘oxygen’ as it were), whether it is paint, ink, chemicals, light rays or text upon a page.
First and foremost, ecologists are interested in the interrelationship between organisms and environment. Likewise, we can consider images in relation to their environments of production and reception. Of course an organism’s environment also includes interaction with other organisms. Similarly, then, we can consider the interrelations of different images, image-types and image media. What we start to find are different relations of interactions, with a range of structures, hierarchies and/or differences on display. For ecologists there are three key ‘units’ of assessment: the organism, its community and the eco-system. ‘No one organism lives in simple isolation, interacting, according to selfish physiological requirements . . . each organism is part of a complete community of creatures, each interacting with each other as well as with their abiotic environment [the wider eco-system], and each affecting each other’s use of the resources that they share’ (Putman and Wratten, 1984, p.43). There are differences of scale and complexity represented here. We can begin by imagining the single organism. But we know organisms always exist within a ‘set of interacting organisms’ (p.43), which we can broadly define as a community — though this does not mean necessarily a ‘friendly’ community. Animals and plants can rely on one another for habitat requirements, food and reproduction. Plants, for example, rely on insects for pollination or mammals and birds for the dispersal of seeds; yet they can also compete with one another for light and space. As we come to consider the overall, encompassing environment within which communities exist we begin to account for the full complexity of an eco- system as a ‘self-contained ecological entity of both organisms and their complete biotic and abiotic environment . . . an independent self-contained and self-sufficient block’ (Putman and Wratten, 1984, p.43).
Let us imagine something similar for the study of images. We can begin with the image itself, which like an organism is of course already complex, but what happens when we place it into a wider community of images? We can examine how images work with or against other images, and/or how they feed on other images. We can also consider the wider ‘image-system’ — all the contextual factors which allow images to exist in the first place.
Consider the cartoon of ‘The History of Semiology’ (above), which appears in Roland Barthes autobiography. We are aware that even though it is only black and white and comprised of fairly rough pen-strokes, the image is in fact highly complex. The image can be divided into different portions, though also we note the importance of repetition within the image. There are specific graphic conventions employed which we are familiar with. The use of shading underneath the caveman’s unicycle (along with extraneous marks to the left of the wheel of the final image of the caveman, on the right-hand side of image) help denote movement. Yet, equally, the shading at the base of the sign-posts helps define the solid ground, in which the posts are fixed. The rectangular framing of the central portion of the image sets this image of a caveman apart from those on either side — suggesting a wholly different status in terms of representation.
However, the cartoon is as much of interest for its interaction with a ‘community’ of images and meanings. The choice of a caveman nicely evokes ideas — images — of evolution, which then helps a play of associations with an evolution of semiotics (as suggested by the title, ‘The History of Semiology’), and it is semiotics in particular that establishes a more complex ‘community’ of meanings in the cartoon. The use of text as an image, for the sign-post, is crucial to its humour, which you can only fully appreciate if you understand something about the meaning of the word ‘sign’ in the discourse of semiotics. These different elements, then, feed off one another to make the image meaningful (and in this case amusing). Crucially, the interaction of a community of images and references enables the cartoon to go beyond the basic status of its graphical, representational elements (i.e. the representation of a caveman on a unicycle).
Added to which, we can also consider the cartoon’s wider image-system. What is it that allows the image to exist at all? On one level there is the concept and genre of the cartoon image, which can seem obvious enough, yet is only something we come to know and understand as we gain a certain competency with text and image. There are different kinds of cartoon drawings and used for different purposes. Where do we gain this understanding and what status is afforded a cartoon image? — it will differ according to different people, context and use. We might also examine more technical aspects, such as the significance of a signature — which in our example appears in the bottom-right of the image. Signatures represent ideas of authenticity, which we can relate to long-standing debates about the ‘value’ of art. The signature can be a mark of unique achievement and skill, which we attribute to an individual, but equally it can be a mark of exchangeable, repeatable economic value. Thus, whilst the ‘History of Semiology’ cartoon might not be of exceptional economic value, we can immediately place it within a marketplace of images. It was no doubt originally commissioned, and its ownership was transferred upon payment from that of an artist to a newspaper corporation. Today, were it to come up for auction, it would likely fetch more than other lesser-known images, and in part, this relates to its extended use. It originally appeared in the International Herald Tribune, in 1974, but arguably it is only because of its further circulation, in Roland Barthes’ autobiography, that we still come across it and continue to value it. Newspapers are ephemeral, published one day and disappearing the next, with the exception of copies held by libraries. Today, with the Internet we archive and make accessible a great deal more than ever before. Nonetheless, in the case of newspapers, the Internet is heavily text-based. Even if it is possible to access the text of a newspaper article from the 1970s it is rare we see original print-layouts. However, if an image is repeated in a book it is likely to remain accessible for longer, though equally its status changes — it can, for example, be valued more than it was ever intended to be. In the case of ‘The History of Semiology’, the cartoon is immediately afforded further authority by virtue of a critic such as Barthes choosing to reproduce it; a process that further evolves — in one way or another — with its reproduction in this book.
Thus, so far, we can see in conjunction with images and an image-community there are various processes, structures and contexts that make up an ‘image-system’; all of which need to be taken into account when trying to understand the nature, role and significance of any single image and the combination of images. Of course, trying to unpick the various interrelationships is no simple task and not least because we quickly recognize images and their meanings are never static. Evolution is a fundamental principle of ecology, and whilst we should not try to apply this too literally to images, it is important we consider how an ecology of images describes a dynamic set of relationships between images and the wider elements of an image-system. Darwin’s concept of a ‘polity of nature’ or dynamic equilibrium marks a fundamental shift in the study of natural history away from a static or mechanistic understanding towards a relational, evolutionary one. Darwin was ‘the first to stress forcefully that animals and plants were not perfectly adapted to their natural environments . . . When conditions changed, so the adaptive needs also changed’ (Benson, 2000, p.60). It would be misleading to think about images in terms of the ‘survival of the fittest’. However, there are narratives we tell about certain images or image-types which gain prominence. Some images gain greater popularity and interest than others. Some are important because they are unique, others because they are widely reproduced. Art images, for example, as unique items, tend to be highly valued and have whole discourses build around them. Yet, art images are not the most common images we come into contact with. In any given day we are far more likely to look at an instructional image (e.g. on the back of food packaging, or an emergency sign on a train) than we are to see a work of art. Yet, we tend to know a lot more about art images, how they were made, what they represent, their market value, even their attribution to a school of thinking.
Thus, in addition to understanding the complex make-up of images, their communities and the broad environment, or image-system, we can consider various attributes of their dissemination. We can borrow a set of keywords from ecology, to include: distribution, abundance, energy, adaptation and succession. Some of these words relate in quite straightforward ways to images. We can ask easily enough where and by whom images are distributed and in what kind of abundance. As mentioned, art images tend to be restricted in how they are distributed and in what quantities. It is rare now for an artwork not to be reproduced in some way (you can search on the Internet for almost all major artworks), but nonetheless, there remains a high degree of importance around an original artwork or set of prints. By contrast, marketing images are intended for wide distribution. The Coca-Cola logo, which essentially carries very little meaning in itself, gains its significance and prominence due to its multiplicity.
However, what about the words ‘energy’, ‘adaptation’ and ‘succession’? In ecology, the sun is the ultimate source of energy and, in line with the principle that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred, ecologists are particularly interested in the rates and efficiency of energy conversion from one chain in the eco-system to another. The point of an ‘ecology of images’ is rather different, since, as Sontag points out, images ‘are an unlimited resource, one that cannot be exhausted by consumerist waste’. Nonetheless, images can still be thought of in terms of energy and conversions, if only to ask what it is that leads to the creation and longevity of an image. Images do not simply appear out of nowhere, they have gestation and context. In some cases, as with scientific imaging, we might argue abstract processes and technological developments lie at the heart of their creation. Whereas with graphics and consumer advertising many visual cultural influences (typically from the worlds of art and fashion) inform adopted styles and codes, even if these are not always apparent to the casual onlooker. Importantly, there is a history of all images, which we can examine in terms of their original sources, ongoing consumption, and associated adaptations. We can ask why an image comes into common currency: Is its consumption specific to a narrow band of ‘consumers’ or users (e.g. scientists, art historians), or is the image ubiquitous and widely adopted? If so, how? — through its repetition perhaps, or maybe due to adaptations? Cartoons are a good example of how images can be adapted and manipulated, lending them new currency. In some cases this can lead to the succession of an image, i.e. an image that takes prominence over another. This is particularly evident, for example, with the work of Public Relations companies which ‘manage’ the image of political leaders and celebrities, typically at times of difficulty when their image is perceived to be tarnished, perhaps due to specific events and associations.
Despite having traced the idea of an ‘ecology of images’ by looking closely at the study of ecology itself, it is important to stress the exercise is certainly not to impose scientific terms and concepts. The intention is purely to step back from the image, to think about its greater complexity and variety. The aim is to slow ourselves down before the image, to appreciate complexity; to seek to understand image histories, connections, cultures, and adaptations, as well as to ponder the future of any given image.
TASK: An Ecology Of Images
In order to examine the different levels and layers to the production, meaning and consumption of an image consider the following:
(1) What are the dynamics and interrelationships between image, image- community and image-system?
(2) How would you describe an image in terms of its distribution, abundance, energy, adaptation and succession?
Based on the above two questions to frame the analysis of one of the following images:
- News media image (e.g. The Fall of the Berlin Wall)
- Medical image (e.g. x-ray)
- Art image (e.g. Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’)
- Literary image (e.g. Alice in Wonderland)
- Information image (e.g. The London Underground Map)
To complete the task: Take a large piece of paper and create a montage of visual elements to illustrate the image-community and image-system(s) you associate with the selected image. Alternatively, you can work digitally, cutting and pasting elements into a single document. The point of the exercise is not to create a neat diagram of relationships, but rather to open up as many different possible connections as you can reasonably consider. As you work, annotate your selections with notes about the different levels of interrelationships between image, image-community and image-system; as well as the various attributions of distribution, abundance, energy, adaptation and succession.
When you have completed the exercise, ask yourself the following questions:
- How did you begin the process?
- What were the most obvious associations?
- Did you gain further ideas as you went along; if so, what prompted these ideas?
- What did you find difficult about the process and how might you overcome these problems?
- What further tools, information or understanding do you feel you need?
Attempts to construct an ‘ecology of images’ will likely lead in many different directions. You will hopefully find you can quickly to begin a process of brainstorming, leading to a range of associations. Try not to verbalise the process to much; rely as much as you can on your thoughts and memories of pictures and imagery. As you proceed to locate images you will likley discover manymore images and connections than you had initially considered. It is very easy, for example, to type keyword entries into Internet search engines and to specifically designate a search for image media. Despite searching for a specific image or image-type, results typically reveal far more than you originally imagine. However, the Internet can be limited in how you explore images. We learn about images from other people, from visiting galleries, watching and listening to a range of media, consulting books and by looking around us all the time. It is important, then, to follow-up on a wide range of ideas, experiences and sources.
A further question is what of the ecology images in an increasinly AI-centred environment?
This article is an modified version of an extract from Sunil Manghani’s book, Image Studies: Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2013), which appears on pp.29–37. For more details see chapter 2, ‘Understanding Images’, as well as the opening chapter, ‘Beyond Semiotics’. The book as a whole works through a number of debates and domains of the image. See also: Manghani et al. (eds) Images: A Reader (Sage, 2006).
References
Barthes, Roland (1994 [1975]) Roland Barthes, trans. by Richard Howard. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Benson, Keith R. (2000) ‘The Emergence of Ecology From Natural History’. Endeavour, Vol.24, №2, pp.59–62.
Putman, R.J. and Wratten, S.D. (1984) Principles of Ecology. London: Croom Helm.
Simons, Jon (2008) ‘From Visual Literacy to Image Competence’ in James Elkins (ed.) Visual Literacy. New York: Routledge, pp.77–90.
Sontag, Susan (1979) On Photography. London: Penguin Books.
Sontag, Susan (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
