What makes pictures different from all of the other ways we have of representing things? Why do pictures seem so immediate? What makes a picture realistic or not? Against prevailing wisdom, Kulvicki claims that what makes pictures special is not how we perceive them, but how they relate to one another. This not only provides some new answers to old questions, but it shows that there are many more kinds of pictures out there than many have thought.

Whether it was the demands of life, leisure, or a combination of both that forced our hands, we have developed a myriad of artifacts--maps, notes, descriptions, diagrams, flow-charts, photographs, paintings, and prints--that stand for other things. Most agree that images and their close relatives are special because, in some sense, they look like what they are about. This simple claim is the starting point for most philosophical investigations into the nature of depiction.
On Images, by contrast, argues that what it is to be a picture does not fundamentally concern how such...