The only solution, in Piero's mind, was to go outside geometry .. Piero was right: one shouldn't use the perspective construction to degrade things seen at a grazing angle .. But the theory is also right: such constructions will be seen correctly if the eye is positioned in just the intended place.
It is only that our tolerance for being in the wrong place is now rather small.
Mark A. Peterson
Galileo's Muse
Renaissance Mathematics
and the Arts
Harvard University Press, 2011©
i Silvano Mangana
Armani Hotel, Milan
Elle Decor Italia©
Now that you mention it, I've been analyzing lines for such a long time now that my brain positions the camera almost without my noticing it. I do it unconsciously. More often than not I hold the camera away from my eyes and click without looking into the viewer to surprise myself but even this doesn't surprise me as much as it used to. If so much of it is mechanical, what is left to creation ?
ReplyDeleteThat is a question not entirely new to me.
Thank you, Ivan, for an exceptionally generous glimpse into the response to lines in perspective; the working title of this entry had been, "playing with lines." When I first saw this photograph, I felt it showed more than one tempting vertical positioning, although movement left or right would open the space much less; the more I studied it, it was plain that this was "the shot" Yves Montand had to make in the bank heist scene from Melville's "Cercle Rouge." You remember the audience's elation as he pulls it off; and here I frankly think the room stands up and stamps its foot, "Yes-s-s!"
ReplyDeleteBut we see the less predictable film plane more and more in your shadow pictures, among others, to extremely lively effect; and one's mind goes back to the great short series on the art collector who'd reduced his pieces to two, and the spontaneous but eloquent angles of view selected there. I think you're wrong about the question. I think it still is new to you.
You make a great visit.
Well, I'm going back to Milan to do a new shoot on the Hotel and I wonder if I'll find something as satisfying...
ReplyDeleteYou make a great visitor.
Not so sure, Ivan - with clearer memory today, I recall it was a jewelry heist, not a bank heist. Still, the principle is the same?
ReplyDelete:)
It's been a wonderful year, to our eyes, for Italy and you. I'll be very optimistic.
Why do you refrain from images of men with penises?
ReplyDeleteI think they are apportioned one at a time.
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