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The New Lives of Images
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30 September 2025

In this ambitious new work, eco-philosopher and cultural theorist Adrian Ivakhiv presents an incisive new way of thinking about images and imagination. Drawing upon an immense range of materials, Ivakhiv reassesses the place of imagination in cultural life, analyzing how people have interacted with images in the past and the ways that digital media are profoundly altering these relationships today. The book contributes powerfully to the study of visual culture and digital media, and provides provocative interpretations of a range of important artists and media movements: from the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky, the ambitious multi-screen installations of John Akomfrah, the abstract art of Swedish spiritualist Hilma af Klint, and the Afrofuturism of jazz musicians like Sun Ra and poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, to the ever-expanding universe of animal videos on YouTube. Along the way, the book delves into animacy and religious imagery, iconophilia and iconoclasm, divination and prophecy, "truthiness" and "enchantment networks," online communities and artificial intelligence, the political and affective economies of digital media, and the role of utopian futurism in the present "climate-colonial Anthropocene" predicament. The result is a vital contribution toward a more empowering conception of the creative imagination and its possibilities in today's emerging digital ecology.
"With grace and ease, The New Lives of Images delivers an important and original work for students of visual culture and environmental humanities." —Seán Cubitt, University of Melbourne
"This exciting volume will make readers rethink images and humanity's place in the world.... Highly recommended." —E. Millán, Choice
"The scope of Ivakhiv's project is ambitious and driven by a passionate interest in understanding the visual ecology of the digital culture that has rapidly expanded and shows no sign of relenting. Readers interested in ecology, religion, media, and visuality will find an erudite but accessible study in this richly integrative work." —David Morgan, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture
Preface
Part I: Images and Ecologies: From the Beginning to the Digital
1. The Image
2. Five Image Regimes
3. The Digital Image-World
4. The Play of Imaginaries
Part II: We Are Not Alone: (Post-) Human Becomings in the Image-World
5. Anthroposcene
6. Therioscene
7. Theoscene
Afterimage: Animisms in the Mediocene
Notes
Index