In the beginning was the image…
…not the word. Marks and tracks, natural forms, body language, and so on were the means of communication.
Though early human groups around the world had no connection with each other – and would eventually invent words for these image subjects in disparate languages – they had and retain a great many of them and their meanings in common.
This pool of image subjects of the international collective memory has greatly expanded in today’s image saturated interconnected world to form an indispensable resource of equal or even greater importance: an international visual vocabulary – a system of communication – familiar across all languages and cultures. An international and cross-cultural visual language.
For example: Adam & Eve, AK47, Apple logo, arrow, branch/twig, Christian cross, Dali’s melting watches, David and Goliath, Earthrise, egg, Great Wall of China, heart, Hokusai’s Great Wave, Jesus, leaf, Leaning Tower of Pisa, lightning flash, mushroom cloud, rainbow, star, swastika, x-ray.
There are dictionaries on every subject under the sun and even visual dictionaries that define a word with an image, there has never been a comprehensive dictionary devoted to imagery as a form of trans cultural language capable of expressing sophisticated symbolic and metaphorical meanings. Until now.
The “Dictionary of the Visual Language” is a rigorous identification and classification of the image subjects that have achieved global recognition and understanding and stood the test of time: pictorial tropes, idioms, motifs, icons, natural and man-made forms, archetypes, stereotypes, signs, symbols, and devices.
The dictionary database currently contains
