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Doppizero
# 5

Doppiozero, Online Magazine: Unquoted Image

Every image in the Alterlibrary collection is intended as a quote, an excerpt of a larger discourse. But every image also stands as a matter that could undergo a series of operations and alterations. Therefore, images are renewable sources.

  • Operations: Extraction and Collection. First, it was taken out of its original digital context and collections (the magazine and broader web) and placed into this particular archive via the technical operation of screenshot—effectively shifting its belonging from one public space to another.

  • Image alteration: manipulation in Photoshop:

  • A partial selection was made, isolating only part of the visible scene and thus altering the substance of the original image.

  • After “cutting out” this portion, a blank area remained on the canvas. That void was automatically filled using Photoshop’s AI-driven tool, which sampled the remaining visible elements to generate a new patch of imagery following a similar pattern.

  • Halftone Conversion: Finally, the modified image was transformed into a halftone layer—a print-inspired technique that uses a grid of small, varying dots to simulate continuous tones. Historically, halftone processes were crucial in newspaper and magazine production, enabling photographs to be reproduced using a pattern of ink dots rather than solid blocks of color or grayscale.

Remains and fragments, points of a lecture, pieces of reality, amounts of appearance: whenever we read an image, are we free to investigate its possible meaning and its relationship to a given reality? Things from a distance may appear differently.

This photograph, sourced from an online Italian magazine called Doppiozero, has been easily downloaded from the website and added to the collection Opacity of Images. Its original function was to illustrate an article about the death of migrants navigating the Mediterranean sea, but it remained uncredited and undescribed.

Invitations to contemplate
  • why did I collect this image
  • What if we see differently?
This image is part of the collection
  • This image is part of the collection Opacity of Images
Keep exploring
  • Well, where does the Danube has its origin?  It seems that, against the age-old controversies between specialists, it stems from the source of the river Breg, but the water that irrigates the meadow from which the Breg rises comes from a pipe, planted straight into the ground.  An old woman who l …
  • Jone Kvie, Here, here VI

This image is part of the collection Opacity of Images

This quote has been selected as part of one of the Alterlibrary collections, titled Opacity of Images.

The opacity of images that could have a documentary purpose. Images sediment fragments of reality, individual and collective points of view, and cultural values. How do we read them?

Opacity is generally understood as the quality of being impenetrable or resistant to full comprehension—something we can’t see through entirely. In the context of images, the Opacity of Images refers to the notion that photographs, illustrations, or visual materials are never completely transparent conveyors of meaning or truth. Instead, they contain layers of interpretation, cultural baggage, and subjective viewpoints that render them partially inscrutable. This opacity prompts us to question not only what we see but also how we see—and whose perspectives are shaping the act of looking.

of our Imagination