The Problem of the Image: Medium, Referent, Circulation, and Belief

The Birth of Venus (Sandro Botticelli). Sorce: Wikipedia

Introduction

Images no longer occupy a stable place within contemporary culture. They circulate at unprecedented speed, detach from their original contexts, and operate across domains once held apart—art, documentation, entertainment, commerce. The question is no longer simply what images show, but how they function and what we believe they do. At the intersection of medium, referent, circulation, and belief, the image becomes a site of uncertainty rather than representation. This article approaches that uncertainty through a theoretical lens informed by Walter Benjamin and Jean Baudrillard, using the case of Australian photographer Bill Henson as a symptomatic example rather than a moral controversy.

Medium and Ontology: Painting versus Photography

The distinction between painting and photography has long rested on assumptions about their relationship to reality. Painting is conventionally understood as interpretive: it passes through the imagination, gesture, and subjectivity of the artist. Photography, by contrast, has been culturally coded as factual, grounded in a mechanical process that registers the presence of what once stood before the lens. This belief aligns with Charles Sanders Peirce’s notion of indexicality, according to which the photographic image bears a physical connection to its referent.

What matters here is not whether this distinction holds under scrutiny, it clearly does not, but that it continues to structure collective perception. A painted figure is perceived as an artistic construction, while a photographic figure is often taken as proof that “this was there.” The photograph thus appears closer to reality, even as decades of critical theory have questioned this proximity. The anxiety provoked by certain images stems less from what they depict than from the medium through which they appear.

Reproducibility, Aura, and the Loss of Context

Walter Benjamin’s analysis of mechanical reproduction offers an essential framework for understanding this shift. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin argues that traditional artworks possessed an aura tied to their uniqueness, location, and ritual function. Photography and film dissolve this aura by enabling endless reproduction and displacement. Images are no longer encountered within a singular space or moment; they are accessed anywhere, at any time.

This transformation alters not only how images are distributed, but how they are received. Removed from the gallery or archive, the image enters a continuum of visual material that includes advertising, social media, and entertainment. Context no longer frames interpretation; instead, interpretation becomes volatile. The same image can oscillate between aesthetic contemplation and suspicion, depending on where and how it appears. Benjamin’s insight thus prepares the ground for a more radical diagnosis of the contemporary image economy.

From Representation to Simulation: A Baudrillardian Shift

Jean Baudrillard extends this critique by questioning the very premise of representation. In his account, images no longer reflect reality or distort it; they generate effects that replace the need for a referent altogether. This is the logic of simulation. Within hyperreality, signs circulate independently, producing a sense of the real without anchoring themselves in it.

Photography occupies a paradoxical position in this system. Despite widespread awareness of manipulation, staging, and digital alteration, photographs continue to function as privileged signs of reality. They are treated as evidence even as their referential grounding erodes. This contradiction is central to Baudrillard’s analysis: belief survives the collapse of foundations. Images retain authority not because they are true, but because the system requires them to be believed.

Baudrillard’s notion of the transaesthetic further clarifies this condition. Art no longer occupies a distinct sphere; aestheticization spreads across all forms of imagery. The boundaries separating art, documentation, and mass culture dissolve. What remains are regulatory responses—legal, moral, institutional—attempting to restore distinctions that no longer hold at the level of images themselves.

The Henson Case as Symptom, Not Exception

The public controversy surrounding Bill Henson’s photographs can be read within this framework. The images, which depict young sitters in states of partial undress, generated debate not primarily because of their subject matter, but because of their photographic form and modes of circulation. Similar figures populate the history of Western painting without provoking comparable responses. Think of The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. The difference lies in the belief that photography delivers unmediated access to reality and in the ease with which such images travel beyond curated spaces.

Once detached from the gallery, the photographs entered a broader visual economy where distinctions between art and other image types blur. The unease they provoked reflects a loss of control over meaning rather than a clear ethical judgment. From a Baudrillardian perspective, the case reveals how images become unstable signs, open to reclassification as they circulate. The controversy thus functions as a symptom of a deeper condition: the inability of contemporary culture to locate images within stable symbolic frameworks.

Conclusion: Belief after the Image

The problem of the image today is not deception but excess. Images do not hide reality; they overwhelm it. At the intersection of medium, referent, circulation, and belief, meaning becomes fragile. Baudrillard helps us see why attempts to regulate images often feel both urgent and ineffective: they address content while ignoring the system in which images operate. As representation gives way to simulation, the question is no longer whether images are true, but how belief persists once truth loses its grounding. This question becomes even more pressing in an era of digital synthesis and artificial generation, where indexicality itself begins to dissolve.

References

Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). University of Michigan Press.

Baudrillard, J. (2005). The conspiracy of art. Semiotext(e).

Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Penguin.

Greer, G. (2008). Let us keep the Henson pictures. The Guardian.

Peirce, C. S. (1955). Philosophical writings of Peirce (J. Buchler, Ed.). Dover.

Taylor, T., & Winquist, C. (Eds.). (2010). Baudrillard reframed: Interpreting key thinkers for the arts. I.B. Tauris.