We humans have scaffolded minds into an ecological niche. Considering this, the main thesis I will defend in this article is that we humans live surrounded by images, and we spatially organise these images into a particular cultural niche which I call imaginal space, a material or virtual space that we interactively navigate. We use such images in the imaginal space as fundamental props in the imaginative dynamics of our scaffolded minds. The images we find in our imaginal space are public depictive representations. They are twofold objects: on the one hand, they are material objects in that they can be manipulated into the ecological niche; on the other hand, they also are normative objects in that their representational function can be redesigned through a practice of use. As a first consequence of this main thesis, I will contend that public representations emergent into the imaginal space of a certain community may play a crucial regulative role for imagination: emergent systems of public representations can get a canonical status in their community, so that they can exert a normative power on the members of that community regulating their imagistic mental representations. As a second consequence, I will defend that the canonical images emergent in the imaginal space constitute the collective imagery of a human community: they support and influence the development of public narratives in the considered community.
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