Chapter 4

This chapter starts out by talking about what 'realistic' really means. Most people (including me) feel that realistic is something that looks like an (unaltered) photograph. But according to the book, a clear line cannot be drawn between what's real and what's abstract. It first talks about history, such as how sepia toning was common in the 1800s to keep the photo from decomposing quickly. The book also talks about how today, we can digitally make photos to look the same as they did back then, which to me I think is something very interesting that we want to go 'backwards' in times. Only in photography and paintings do we want to de-evolve and look like it did before there was much technology. Eventually it talked about the different phases of style through time until we got to the history of perspective.

Perspective, which means to see clearly, is one of the most important aspects of photography. One of the earliest roots was the optical studies of Euclid (who showed that light travels in straight lines). The scientific revolution brought about a lot of free-thinking to the world, as thus helped make perspective flourish. Many studies were done, with many pictures drawn trying to explain perspective (Descartes Theory of Perspective for example). But one of the most complicated and interesting aspects of perspective is with the human body.

There was a painting of a dead Jesus that is very important for body perspective. To me, the body looks way too short, but it was supposed to be that way. Honestly this kind of confused me because the book made it sound like the artist did it on purpose. The camera obscura also made a "interiorized observer to an exterior world". Some painters criticized others of using a camera to aid in painting -- they thought this was 'cheating' much like steroids in sports today.

Perspective can be tricky though, as Monet showed in his numerous paintings of a train station. Each day he'd paint it over again, showing how the sunlight, weather, people, etc would change the perspective of the painting. Then cubists showed up, who would paint images as if it was being seen from multiple perspectives all at once (Picasso). Action painting didn't show any perspective, so the artists just threw paint and did crazy stuff and called it art.

Video games changed perspective greatly -- people can now view a scene in literally any perspective they want: first person, third person, changing the camera angle, moving far away, etc etc. It is really limitless, which is really exciting.
That's it!! Thanks for reading