|
Every painter should be aware of the very real, physical differences between what a camera "sees" (and then translates to a 2-D plane) and the physiology of human sight . . . for one thing, we see stereoscopically, i.e., with two "cameras" set at slightly different points of view , and producing over-lapping images. Secondly, that image is "projected" not onto a flat plane of film as in a camera, but onto the hemispherical surface of the retina (kinda like IMAX!). Finally, the processes which include eye movement, selective focus and mental inversion of the projected image result in the visual impressions we call sight.
Interestingly, the eye movement that produces a "composite scan" of what we're looking at results in slight vertically elongated distortion. We actually "see" one another as appearing slimmer than we are in fact, which accounts for the disgust one encounters when photographs "make us look fat".
It's worth noting that as recently as the past century, there were yet primitive cultures who had no experience with photographic images. Invariably, these folks were unable to understand photographs as visual representations of real things . . . they had to "learn" to read them! We, on the other hand, take photographs to be unequivocal "visual truths" . . . is seeing really believing?
|