Enrico Castelnuovo, in a famous text, indicates the complexity of the History of Art discipline
and its ramifications. In his words, “the best possible way to do art history is to recover, with
all the means at our disposal, everything that is possible to know about the starting point,
about the criteria for composition, evaluation, etc., following by the artist and the public, or
rather by the public, while having a clear awareness of our situation, that is, where we are
and where we position ourselves when we attempt certain operations. [...] Complexity and
multiplicity: the art historian must look in many directions, take into account lots and lots of
data”. Valuable data from Castelnuovo that, in a way, correspond to the current demands of
the discipline. “[...] All the means we have at our disposal" also means what the time calls for
and to what extent the questionings are important at a given time. The horizons today ask for
more windows, wider and open to diverse paths. Thinking about the analysis of images
through the history of art is a Herculean and necessary task. The discipline has never been
thought of in isolation, but always in relation to or positioned among so many others.
This point of view is enhanced by a vision that considers the history of art in relation to the
history of images or forms, in the broadest possible way. Hans Belting, whether in Image
and Cult or The End of Art History, reflects on the broad terms in which images, especially
outside the traditional set faced by the discipline, can be thought of together. If today we
question more clearly the place that certain images have in art history, we work equally from
a revisionist point of view and often condemning the performance and discipline carried out
in the past. To return to Castelnuovo we must act with all the artifices we possess, however,
such points are also historical.

At the same time, we understand that images must be submitted to historical interrogation.
To understand them, the historian can investigate their relationship with tradition and/or the
context of production, but it is essential to be aware of the fact that the work continues to
happen. Our interest in the past is based on the concrete demands of our time.

This dossier intends to encompass a broad set of analyses of images with various
approaches from different disciplines. Art history, communication, anthropology and other
areas are welcome for a fractal vision of image analysis in our contemporaneity. Also, a
consistent variation of media: cinema, photography, advertising, fine arts, etc. We aim
among other things at the following axes:

1 - Contemporary urges: for a broader history of images
2 - Visual studies
3 - Decoloniality
4 - The work as an archive