Why photographs do not depict nature

11/11/2012

A simple proof that we do not see in perspective

    There is a myth that photographs represent reality.   This a myth, because cameras do not see at all.
    It is true that what cameras reproduce accords to the laws of perspective. By contrast, the human mind-eye does see, but as a literal fact, not in perspective. Although the human lens is similar to the lens of a camera, the images we see are constructed in the brain for the mind, and the mind’s eye invests everything that it sees with its knowledge. Nature is full of concepts.
    We have two terms – reality and nature. I shall reserve the word reality for what is altogether transcendent. We do not directly perceive reality.
    What we do directly see, hear, touch and so forth, I shall call nature. Nature in this sense is a construct of the human mind, and does not exist independently of the mental endeavour to understand “what it sees”. Yet it is nature – it is precisely what we grasp with our senses – the very things we see. The raw material, the un-interpreted sensory information received by the eye, is never directly experienced in consciousness; what is seen is that which has already been interpreted. We are generally unaware of this active process of interpretation by the mind because it takes place at an unconscious level.

Within this very body, mortal though it be, and only a fathom high, but conscious and endowed with mind, is the world.   THE BUDDHA

    Nature is not a given something in front of which one can set a lens and passively record. Nature only exists before and for the mind.

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations. PAUL CEZANNE

    To focus a lens means to bring an object into sharper definition. To focus for a human mind means to pay closer attention to the object in view – to study it – to reach for an understanding of it, to bring that understanding into consciousness. A camera as such can never focus in this sense, though the possibility of photography as art rests on the ability of the photographer to use the camera as if it were his mind’s eye. Looking is not the same as seeing.

I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things. HENRI MATISSE

    Because nature is not a given something but is constructed for the benefit of the mind, our experience of nature is always charged with emotion. A human being cannot look at anything without having some kind of emotional reaction to it; we have strong words, too, for the extremes of this reaction – beauty, the sublime, love, passion – and terms of negative emotion – hatred, anger, disappointment, disgust.

An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end. PAUL CEZANNE

A camera, merely as a camera and not as the instrument of the artist, never records emotion. Emotion is only ever depicted in a photograph by virtue of the human ability to project emotion into what it sees. In other words, the human mind learns to interpret photographs as if they were nature.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. ORSON WELLS.

When looking at photographs the human mind reinvents what is given in raw sensation to make the photograph seem more natural. In effect, and unconsciously, we lie to ourselves in order to convince ourselves that what we see in a photograph is nature.
    In fact, interpreting photographs is a social skill that in our Western cultures we learn from an early age and take for granted. We get very lazy when looking at photographs. But the skill of understanding that a photograph is supposed to be a depiction of nature, if it has not been learned in early childhood, is an overwhelmingly difficult task for the mind. Take a photograph to a remote place in the world, if one still exists, show the aboriginals there a photograph of yourself, and they will not understand or see what on earth it is. To understand a photograph is not an innate skill, but a social skill acquired in childhood. And something else is lost in the process.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.   PABLO PICASSO

One consequence of this social skill is that we accept as “good” photographic images that would look absurd if replicated in a drawing. For example, when shadows fall on a hand so as to make the hand look like rubber. The depiction of a hand to reveal an element of structure is very important when making a drawing of one.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things but their inward significance. ARISTOTLE

There is a curious double-bind at work these days: we go to an Art Fare, see a painting of a photograph that represents a hand as a piece of rubber, and then convince ourselves, because it is a painting of a photograph that the hand looks “real”. It’s a joke!

It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop. AUGUSTE RODIN

Because nature is always replete with emotion, that art which copies nature, has never sought to replicate it the manner in which a camera may be said to replicate it. Artists have never sought to replicate things in this sense. Do you think Goya or David attempted to replicate what they see? Like all artists, they charge their works with the emotion that they already found replete in nature.

Art is a harmony in parallel with nature.   PAUL CEZANNE

Art is primarily concerned with the expression of value. In portraiture, art is sometimes concerned with the expression of character, which is a spiritual value. The work of Ingres is a good illustration.
    What the artist does when he or she draws from life is nothing like and never has been like what taking a snap involves. When drawing from nature the artist tries to bring into consciousness and so depict on the paper what his mind does unconsciously in its construction of nature.
    The eye sees in three dimensions created from the stereographic superposition of slightly different images from both eyes – separated by the nose. A drawing is a two dimensional reproduction of three-dimensional solids and must inevitably employ conventions. These conventions are derived from the unconscious manner in which the mind interprets space – by creating borders and differential shades where surfaces meet. The mind is active in this process, thus separating the mental image from the photograph irrevocably.
    I have nothing pejorative to say against photography as art. I do not decry it, but I am not a photographer myself. What I can say is that when photography becomes art, the photographer plays the same game as the artist. He arranges the image, or selects from copious copies of the same event; he arranges the lighting; he arranges the exposure, and so on. So, by means of the choices of the photographer, the photograph interprets what it sees, and so mirrors the unconscious processes of the mind. Thus photography becomes art.

Photography, when used as a representational art, is not a mere copy of nature. This is proved by the rarity of the ‘good’ photograph. LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY

    For the artist to draw directly from photographs is as dangerous as injecting heroin. Dangerous for his art, and problematic for his soul. It is a bad habit and likely to lead to bad effects. The artist must see and look; and photographs provide only limited possibilities for this. It is not that it is entirely impossible to use photographs in some way as a source, but just that the habit so addles the brain that once it has developed it’s hard to get out of it. And what if you’ve built yourself some kind of reputation as an artist on the basis of copying photographs, making a grid or projecting them onto a blank canvass and painting by numbers; and then you wake up in the middle of the night one day in a cold sweat, in a blue funk, and realise you can’t draw? It’s embarrassing.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. LEONARDO DA VINCI

    I would not deprecate the use of photographs as an aide memoir. To a sculptor learning anatomy good photographs of models are very useful. One should look at photographs in the same way one looks at nature – to know, understand and love the visible world.

Only the bad artists of the nineteenth century were frightened by the invention of photography; the good ones all welcomed it and used it.   KENNETH CLARK

    Although the artist never sees reality, which is transcendent, he can conceive of it. With his concrete physical and fertile imagination he seeks to render into visual form the products of his imagination. Symbolist and abstract art reflect just two aspects of this desire to seek beyond nature.
    The characteristic feature of a great artist is imagination. When one looks at the works of a master, of every age, whatever the genre or style, one is immediately gripped by a sensation of transport – how could he do this? How could he visualise this?

Design, which by another name is called drawing is the fount and body of painting and sculpture and architecture and of every other kind of painting and the root of all sciences. MICHELANGELO.

    Imagination appears to be an accidental gift to those who have not taken the trouble to acquire it. To be imaginative is to be full of invention and inspiration; it is to be capable of rendering the ineffable and transcendent reality into visual form. But to have this power does not come about by chance. It is not an accident that some are more imaginative than others; it is the product of work.

If the artist has not drawn a great deal and studied carefully selected ancient and modern works, he cannot by himself work well from memory or enhance what he copies from life.   VASARI

    You do not acquire imagination by limping on the crutches of copying photographs. It’s impossible. Imagination begins with seeing and looking. To acquire imagination we must start by observing nature, and not by copying photographs. For, as you and I well know...

A man that cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot. ANDRE BRETON.

Place two coins at equal distance on a flat surface from your eye and look!

According to the laws of perspective, the more distant coin will appear to have exactly half the diameter of the nearer coin. Cameras record images in this way. However, we see the second coin as much larger, and almost the same size as the first.

Our unconscious mind knows that the second coin is similar to the first and this knowledge causes us to unconsciously increase the size of the more distant object. We do not see in perspective.
Given that nature is what we see, this means that photographs distort nature. They never represent nature. This is a literal truth.

The model is leaning in and so there is a problem of foreshortening. The camera "knows" nothing of this, and reproduces the image in perspective. The head is far too large in proportion to the body. As we are socialized from early childhood to accept photographs as "real" we may not immediately perceive how ludicrous this image is. But if this were drawn exactly as shown, copied from the photograph, the drawing would look stupid.

Compare the photograph above with the drawing my Michelangelo to the left. It is immediately obvious that it would never be possible to render the drawing by copying any photograph. One can only represent nature by drawing from it.

Students being taught to copy from photographs.

The social interpretation of photographs

Turnbull's study
"Turnbull studied the Bambuti pygmies, who live in the dense rain forests of the Congo, a closed-in world without open spaces. Turnbull brought a pygmy out to a vast plain where a herd of buffalo were grazing in the distance. The pygmie said he had never seen one of those insects before; when told they were buffalo, he was offended and Turnbull was accused of insulting his intelligence. Turnbull drove the jeep towards the buffalo; the pygmy's eyes widened in amazement as he saw the insects 'grow' into buffalo before him. He concluded that witchcraft was being used to deceive him." From Gross, Psychology.

Deregowski's study
Deregowski strudied the Me'en tribe of Ethiopia. A woman was presented with a photograph of a human head in profile. "She discovered in turn the nose, the mouth, the eye, but where was the other eye? I tried by turning my profile to explain why she could see only one eye, but she hopped round to my other side to point out that I possessed a second eye which the other lacked." Quoted in Gross, Psychology.