The Structure of Seeing Pictures

Abstract

Husserl’s theory of picture perception aims at making explicit the commonplace sense of referring to something through pictures. It gives a phenomenological description of the structure and the conditions of seeing something else in pictures, rather than a definition of what it is to be a picture. The basic assumption of the theory is that perceivers are able to see something that in principle does not occur in her surroundings by means of pictures on the grounds of ordinary perception, albeit it and picture perception differs. This article first expounds some elements of the phenomenological theory of perception, then presents the core of the theory and spells out this description in terms of the theory of parts and the phenomenological geometry of vision. Finally, some shortcomings and gaps of the theory are addressed.