From the specular illusion to the performativity of images

This essay resumes Arlindo Machado’s main critiques of the ontology of photography to discuss the anthropocentrism that marks the classic theory and hypothesize other ways of thinking about the technical image, based on the ontological division between the world (Nature), the human (Man), and technique. As a consequence of this critique, the text argues that the recognition of the materiality of the processes of image production and circulation would imply the emergence of multiple and heterogenous ontologies of the image. As such, the image crystalizes a specific way of understanding the word, which the artist encodes in their work. This conceptualization leads to the enhancement of the performative aspect that the image assumes in contemporary culture.