Image

===In culture===
Virtually all cultures have produced images and applied different meanings or applications to them. The loss of knowledge about the context and connection of an image to its object is likely to result in different perceptions and interpretations of the image and even of the original object itself.

Through human history, one dominant form of such images has been in relation to religion and spirituality.{{Weasel inline|date=November 2023}} Such images, whether in the form of [[Idolatry|idols]] that are objects of worship or that represent some other spiritual state or quality, have a different status as artifacts when copies of such images sever links to the spiritual or supernatural. The German philosopher and essayist [[Walter Benjamin]] brought particular attention to this point in his 1935 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Benjamin |first1=Walter |title=The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction |url=https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf|journal= Illuminations |location=New York |publisher=Schocken Books |year=1969}}</ref>

Benjamin argues that the mechanical reproduction of images, which had accelerated through photographic processes in the previous one hundred years or so, inevitably degrades the "authenticity" or quasi-religious "aura" of the original object. One example is [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s ''[[Mona Lisa]]'', originally painted as a portrait, but much later, with its display as an art object, developed a "cult" value as an example of artistic beauty. Following years of various reproductions of the painting, the portrait's "cult" status has little to do with its original subject or the artistry. It has become famous for being famous, while at the same time its recognizability has made it a subject to be copied, manipulated, satirized, or otherwise altered, in forms ranging from [[Marcel Duchamp|Marcel Duchamp's]] [[L.H.O.O.Q.|''L.H.O.O.Q''.]] to [[Andy Warhol]]'s multiple [[Screen printing|silk-screened]] reproductions of the image.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489409 |website=The Met|title=Mona Lisa|author=Warhol, Andy  |publisher=The Metropolitan Museum of Art}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=November 2023}}

In modern times, the development of "[[non-fungible token]]s" (NFTs) have been touted as an attempt to create "authentic" or "unique" images that have a monetary value, existing only in digital format. This assumption has been widely debated.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}