Public Images: visual Culture and the Redefinition of the Public Sphere

The contemporary expansion of images implies dramatic changes in the concept of public sphere. The article starts from the convoluted definition of the object of study of visual culture. The complexity of this definition makes approaches from that field of study remain diluted within mediocentric perspectives that prevent the analysis of the transformations that contemporary images provoke in public sphere. In order to develop a framework for the study of the articulations between image and public sphere, the article pays attention to some significant concepts of contemporary image and visuality, such as ubiquity, circulation, agency, and imagination. Finally, the article proposes to review the concept of public sphere understood as mobile, interconnected, and decentralized.