On Jun 25, 2008, at 10:54 AM, William Conger wrote:
One thing lost, I've noticed is how pre-photo art, portraits, say, seem to depict the head as if one is walking around it, that is, the head is stretched laterally so that the distance between the eyes is more pronounced than it is in post-photo portraits. The gaze of the distant eye is in a different direction than the gaze in the nearby eye. We mentally move around the heads, as if we were a slow-motion satellite.
That's a small "trick" artists learn. Point the two eyes in slightly different directions, slightly open, so the final portrait doesn't look cross-eyed.
Then one begins to notice this trait in more subtle depictions: trees, clouds, fabrics, bodily movement, etc. Everything is somehow stretched a bit, accounting, no doubt, for the binocular human gaze, as yet unaltered by the monocular photo-gaze. I'm not sure we can recover it even if we can "see" it. Instead, we are stretching and manipulating nature digitally in ways we've not yet fully explored.
I haven't noticed that, but there I have noticed that it takes a while to accommodate to the frame of a photograph, whether an actual photo or, more often, to the TV screen. When I first start to watch the TV, I'm aware that the screen occupies a very small range in my field of vision, but as I get more involved in the program, I don't notice the picture ending at the edges. The scene seems to just fade off at the periphery, like normal vision.
BTW, William, I wasn't saying that one shouldn't use photographs, but that one should remember what the differences between the photo and the actual object are. But I will note that, as a confirmation of you assertion that we already see the world more as a photo, there are many examples of portrait paintings that are clearly derived from photographic sources--at least in some parts (such as the drapery folds of the clothing, the ornamental details of the furniture, even the face and hands of the sitter). And these examples come from the hum-drum portrait of Mother and Daisy, the golden retriever, and the university chanellor or town mayor. In the pre-photo days, the artist worked from actual objects and with stand-ins wearing the same clothes.
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