ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with conceptual ground-clearing, perforce; take the form of the ambiguation of some classic and classical opposites. It considers some of the analytic procedures that might help to establish the politics of pictures by reference both to inherited modes of thought. The chapter discusses the classical distinction between public and private space in the most solidly real and public of the visual media, namely architecture, taking both public space and the public itself to be 'talking pictures'. 'Forensics' as 'material evidence' can be combined with the older notion of 'adversarial argument', and applied to the analysis of pictures. One classic method of comparative analysis is binary thought; sorting things out into polar opposites, black and white. One of the binaries that contemporary politics has inherited from the ancients is the distinction between public and private. In classical politics, the public domain was a wide open space, an architectural site.
