The Moving Life of Still Images
Thursday, 22 January 2026, 16:30-18:30
Senate House, Room 264
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A familiar thought in analytic philosophy is that still pictures are frozen: static images without temporal depth, incapable of anything like the unfolding we find in film, animation, music, or narrative art. On this picture of pictures, temporality enters pictorial representation only with the advent of moving-image technologies. But this assumption is untenable. From Palaeolithic bisons flickering in firelight, to the staged simultaneities of history painting, to the introspections of a Rothko, pictures organise, compress, dilate, and direct temporal experience in ways that standard theories cannot accommodate. In the talk, I’ll suggest that the temporality of pictures is not a defect to be corrected by animation but a constitutive feature of how images mean. Static images generate their own forms of temporal orientation, inviting the viewer into fields of anticipation, memory, and imaginative projection. I will trace several of these modes across different kinds of pictures and consider what follows for broader debates in aesthetics.
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Following NHS guidance, all attendees are strongly encouraged to be vaccinated (including boosters) against Covid-19, unless medically exempt. Our group is diverse; please continue to be considerate of those who wear face coverings and those who don’t. Thank you.