This paper delves into the relationship between politics and image in terms of representation and presence. It is widely accepted that image has much to do with politics as shown in such terms as image politics, image making etc. I argue, in this paper, the politics of representatives has correspondence to the representation of image, while the politics of presence to the presence of image. In doing so, I made a detailed research on how the view of image as appearance has changed since Plato's The republic via Barthes's Mythologies to Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. I contend that the attitude toward image has greatly changed in Deleuze's works including Cinema 1 and Cinema 2, where Deleuze attributes the real and the virtual to image. On the basis of Bergson's theory of image in which image is placed half-way between the 'thing' and the 'representation,' Deleuze refutes the traditional dualism of idealism and materialism, presenting image as presence. Image is no longer appearance nor copy nor fantasy, names that the traditional western philosophy gave to image, but the real and the virtual and, in its most important way, the political. The political subject is no longer represented by image, as in image politics, but actualized by the potential of image.
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