Is a Picture Really Worth 1000 Words?

            In "Metapictures," Mitchell is seeing if pictures provide their own metalanguage rather than deriving a model for pictorial self reference from art or language (Mitchell, 38). Pictures are capable of reflection on themselves and providing a second-order discourse that tells/shows something about pictures (Mitchell, 38). As stated on page 38, Mitchell's essay is an essay about pictures, not an essay in pictures. It is an essay about pictures, but in words, so instead of an image as a text, it is full of text about images. He uses Foucauldian concepts of the relationship between pictures and words to ultimately prove that textuality can be used as an approach to attempt to read images, but images and words are so far removed from each other than one can never truly represent a picture in terms of words or a word in terms of pictures.

            When we see an image, we describe it with words. The picture on page 39 of Mitchell's text is given a lengthy description on page 40. While the image itself is a metapicture and references itself, Mitchell also attempt to explain it through words. Are images capable of being viewed as texts? Can we derive the same meaning simply from looking at a picture as we can from reading the description of the picture? Mitchell seems to make an argument for viewing pictures textually. If you view the image as a text, you only get the one reading you interpret from it. If you textually describe the image, you can delve into a variety of possible explanations including details from not just the picture itself, but also the hypertext surrounding it, however, are you really getting the full idea if you are not looking at the picture itself?

            As Landow would agree, to fully understand a text, we must look at not just the text itself, but also the hypertext. We must look at all the texts that reference that text and the texts that allude to that text or can help us make sense of that text. The concept of hypertext can also be applied to pictures to help us gain an understanding of them if we are to think of the textuality of images. We do not see hypertext when we are looking at an image alone and not reading into its hypertext.

            Foucault asserts that when confronted by the visual (images), words become inadequate (Mitchell, 64). He feels that the relationship between words and images is an imperfect one because words can never perfectly describe images. Images and words cannot be reduced to each other's terms; what we see does not reside in what we say. While we can never truly describe an image in terms of words or a word in terms of images, Mitchell argues that it is only natural to attempt to do this. For example, we apply proper names to images such as "Duck-Rabbit" and "Las Meninas" or even "Scream" and the "Mona Lisa". Foucault suggests that we should remove proper names from images in order to preserve the infinity of the task of describing images in words (Mitchell, 64).

            Margritte's Les trashion des images is an example of a picture that reflects this gap between words and pictures. The image is a picture of a pipe above words that translate to, "this is not a pipe." This complicates the picture/word relationship, but it also means the picture is not a true metapicture since its meta qualities come from the worded part rather than the picture itself.

            Mitchell calls attention to the inside/outside structure of metapictures (Mitchell, 42). He claims the whole concept of meta is based on the inside/outside relationship. In the case of a picture within a picture, each layer is outside of another layer, but they are all inside the same picture. A picture that refers to its own making, according to Mitchell, dissolves the boundary between inside and outside (Mitchell, 42). In order to view the entire inside/outside relationship of a picture, we must view the picture itself as well as read the hypertext surrounding it. The case study of the Public Secrets project is a good example of this inside/outside relationship and how it addresses reflexivity in a text. The creators of the website used a combination of images, words, and sound bites to get across the broader concept of unfairness in prison industrial complexes. The lack of choice the website viewer gets in which quotes they see and how long they appear on screen exemplifies the lack of choice the prisoners they are reading about have. Public Secrets is a text that combines an in depth interview with the hypertext surrounding it, including images, to create a metatextual project.  

            Mitchell's description of metapictures on page 48, "The observer's dialogue within the metapicture do not occur in some disembodied realm outside of history but are embedded in specific discourses, disciplines, and regimes of knowledge," furthers the argument for the necessity of hypertext (as Landow defined it) in understanding metapictures (Mitchell, 48). it is only with the picture/text combination of hyertext that we can accurately understand metapictures because, as Foucault states, a picture cannot accurately be described only in words and a word cannot be described only in pictures.

            Mitchell's text also brought in the question of genre and how it pertains to metapictures. He groups Duck-Rabbit and Las Meninas in the same genre of metapicture (Mitchell, 60). Why is this? According to Miller, a definition for genre must be based on the action a discourse is used to accomplish as opposed to the substance or form of the discourse (Miller, 151). Since Duck-Rabbit and Las Meninas are both self reflexive and were both used for psychological purposes, they could fall under the same genre of metapicture using Miller's definition of genre. They are also both pictures of historical significance that can be interpreted in multiple different ways with the use of a textual lens.

-Kayla Goldstein