Images have always been the trigger of passions - of veneration as well as destruction of
idolatry as well as iconoclasm. But what is the origin of their unique power? Gottfried Boehm
follows this question across the history of Western images. The affective potential of the
images is revealed to him less in their motifs than in the indeterminate ground from which they
rise to take on form. The search for traces of a passion therefore also turns into a journey to
the edges of the images: to where they threaten to dissolve where they face their collapse or
to where we run the risk of losing sight of them.
