Blindness of Seeing. On the Origin of the Images

The purpose of this essay is to investigate on what process of vicarization the image makers (and with them philosophers, anthropologists, etc., and not only artists) subjected the traditional beholder, focusing their attention on those images that can be parastically generated by projective or natural mechanical processes. Particular attention will be given to those works that put their viewer into optical difficulties, subjecting them to retinal stress and relegating them to a situation of minus habens. This process, as we will see, will not only affect vision, but all the senses, delineating almost a pervading action of visual denigration that triggers a sinesthetic perception, with the odd purpose of accentuating the perceptual capabilities of the subject itself. An apparent contradiction, however, resolves itself in a revelation: it makes us blind, for we can see better what surrounds us.