This book emerged from a growing recognition that the critical vocabularies inherited from photography theory, surveillance studies, and media philosophy, however indispensable, cannot fully grasp what images have become. The image is no longer primarily an object of interpretation but a component of operation; no longer a trace of the past but a resource for computing futures; no longer a surface for representation but an infrastructure for governance. The concept of the infrastructural image developed through engagement with multiple sites: content moderation systems governing visibility on global platforms, facial recognition databases converting portraits into biometric queries, and generative AI systems producing synthetic pasts indistinguishable from documentary records. In each case, existing frameworks illuminated only partially what required explanation. Turkey occupies a peculiar position in the global geography of image infrastructures: subject to platforms designed in Silicon Valley yet governed by divergent regulations; integrated into transnational surveillance networks yet maintaining distinct technological arrangements. The suppression of posts about Al-Aqsa Mosque examined in Chapter 5 was not an abstraction but a lived reality for colleagues whose visual expressions were rendered algorithmically illegible. This situated perspective insists that any adequate theory must account for how these systems operate differently across the contexts they claim to govern uniformly. The theoretical resources assembled here—German media theory, Anglo-American infrastructure studies, French critical philosophy—emerged from traditions distant from my own formation. I am aware that this book does not adequately draw on scholarship from South Asia, East Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where different critical resources might illuminate what this analysis obscures. I mark this limitation to identify a horizon that future work must address. The cases examined here are not stable objects. By the time this book reaches readers, some systems will have been discontinued, others transformed. This obsolescence is symptomatic of the condition described: infrastructural images regenerate under new configurations while preserving underlying operational logics. The goal has been to develop concepts adequate to this condition rather than to document temporary instantiations. This book does not offer solutions. It offers a diagnostic framework: concepts for understanding what images have become and what forms of power they enable. Diagnosis is not cure, but it may be its precondition. In a moment when images increasingly see without us, understanding the infrastructures through which they see seems an urgent contribution. Istanbul, 2026

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from Representation to Operational Power

The Infrastructural Image

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The Infrastructural Image