Seeing in Shadows

A venerable view starting with Plato holds that shadows can be pictures. Yet independently of whether Plato’s illusionist-like theory of depiction is correct, it nowadays seems that the perceptual experience affecting shadow apprehension goes against the view. For that experience seems to be either a perception of physical transparency or a perception of ephemera; hence, nothing that may, at least prima facie, count as a pictorial experience. In this paper, however, I will first try to show that shadows perception either is not perception of physical transparency or, if it is perception of ephemera, this does not prevent it from being a perception of something having a pictorial value. Second, I will try to show that since shadows can be grasped in seeing-in experiences à la Wollheim, they can be bona fide pictures, i.e., pictorial representations viz. depictions, under the Wollheimian conception that a seeing-in experience is the mark of pictoriality, i.e., the necessary condition in order for something to be a bona fide picture.