Time in Images and the Legitimation of Identity - Starting from Franz Wickhoff’s typology of figurative representations in a sequence of events, different conceptions of time and identity presupposed by each form of this typology are here outlined, and the observer’s role in the construction of temporal succession is emphasized. The thesis according to which temporality is an ontological attribute or a phenomenological peculiarity of images is rejected. The temporality of images is, instead, the outcome of a "dynamics of legitimation" of the identity both of the artist and of the onlooker, who configure their own identity by constructing temporal succession in a figurative narration.
Key words: Image, Identity, Dynamics of Legitimation, Subject, Time, Narration.