AGATHA WARA

Image from Science Direct. 

Afterimage by Agatha Wara:

I don’t have one specific image in mind, but the question made me think about the images we see with our mind's eye. I thought about something I recently learned—many people can’t actually see images when they close their eyes, a condition similar to those people who don’t have an internal dialogue; they don’t hear the ‘voice’ inside their head.

I wonder: how do these people process the world if they don’t see images in their heads? Do they relate things to experiences? Do they rather feel things?—maybe see a color, an or feel an emotion or some other sensation rather than visualizing the thing?

It’s also fascinating how, in the realm of modern science and technology, there now exist neuroimaging techniques that use AI to create visual representations of what we are looking at. In other words they can decipher the images we see in our minds.

In some ways it feels like our inner world is our last private space. Here, we can have thoughts that we can keep private, unknown to the outside world, unless we choose to reveal them. The development of neuroimagine technology makes me wonder how much longer we will have an inner world that is individual, just for the oneself, and private. In the future people may be forced to share their thoughts and inner images without consent. They will simply be hooked up to a machine and voilà !

In my work I think about blushing—when the face turns red from embarrassment—in relation to private and public space. Not everyone blushes, but those who do are tormented by it. They feel as if they are betrayed by the reddening of their face which reveals to the public what they feel inside: vulnerable. By blushing, one is forced by one's own body to make public an emotion that one would rather keep private and secret.

In order to survive, we’ve learned to hide our emotions. And while that’s sometimes a good thing—otherwise, we’d be walking around without any ‘skin,’ so to speak—it also highlights the tension between privacy and exposure. This idea has a dystopian quality, especially when we think about the future and how images and emotions may be accessed without our consent.

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series about that one image you see when you close your eyes, the one still lingering in your mind. We invite artists and writers to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column has been a part of Objektiv since our very first issue, originally titled Sinnbilde in Norwegian. As the sea of images continues to swell, the series explores which visuals linger and take root in today's endless stream—much like a song that plays on repeat in your head. Whether it's an image glimpsed on a billboard, a portrait in a newspaper, a family photo from an album or an Instagram reel, we're interested in those fleeting moments that stay with you and refuse to let go.