In the “Photography: A Critical Introduction” readings there was a passage on the effects of perspective in photography (page 265). As a painter and sculptor who’s work is largely inspired by the visual phenomenon and subsequent conceptual issues of perspective and its relationship to spatial experiences this passage I found this passage to be particularly interesting. Wells describes perspective as a system of visual organization that dominated Western art from the Renaissance until the early 20th Century. Although Wells’ larger point in this specific passage is that “aesthetic conventions reflect broader sets of ideas”, I believe that the issue of perspective in photography is also largely relevant to the overall focus of this reading: the relationship between traditional art and photography, and their respective ability to depict reality.
While there are many intrinsic properties of the photographic medium, lens distortion is often overlooked. The human eye is essentially a fixed focal length lens, often quoted to fall between 17mm and 24mm. Wide-angle camera lenses falling into the same focal length range display significant distortion, with objects closer to the camera enlarged and objects farther away appearing to rapidly diminish in scale. Additionally, as focal lengths become wider, barrel distortion increases significantly. While, telephoto lenses of much longer focal length solve problems of barrel distortion, they appear to flatten the pictorial space to noticeable degrees. Although the human eye sees in a similar format to wide-angle lenses, the brain corrects these distortions so that we may accurately perceive depth and straight lines remain straight.
This leads me to question why the photograph became such a symbol of realistic depiction when it is an inherently flawed system while a well-trained observational draughtsman can accurately depict illusionistic space with no distortion.
Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of camera lenses can elaborate on whether or not such wide angle or telephoto lenses were available at the time.
1 comment:
I thought it was interesting that you would question "why the photograph became such a symbol of realistic depiction when it [was] an inherently flawed system..." because I think people were really just in awe of how "realistic" the images were. It is true, though, that it was a flawed system, and this was mostly because of the lenses. I found an article by a private collector in which he outlines the development of the photographic lens throughout the 19th Century. Many of the people designing cameras knew that the lenses were not perfect, but they could only get them to be so good depending on the quality of glass they used. They also had to experiment with the shapes of the lenses, and there was always one flaw or another. The widest angle lenses they had were meant for landscape photography, and I know for a fact from taking History of Photo 1 that the cameras and plates needed to take these types of photos were monstrous (the plates being over 20 inches, usually 18x22 inches). For all their size, they still had flaws. People still had faith that what the photos showed was the absolute truth, though. So interesting!!
Here's the article: http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/1015/Evolution-of-the-Photographic-Lens-in-the-19th-Century.html
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