The Non-Realistic Nature of Photography: Further Reasons Why Turner Was Wrong

Abstract

The authors discuss the limitations of photography in producing representations that lead to the accurate perception of shapes. In particular, they consider two situations in which the photographic representation, although an accurate reproduction of the geometry of the two-dimensional image in the eye, does not capture the way human vision changes this geometry to produce a three-dimensionally accurate perception. When looking at a photograph, the viewer's uncertainty of the camera-to-subject distance and the fact that, unnaturally, a photograph presents almost exactly the same view of an object to the two eyes result in substantially distorted perceptions. These most commonly result in a perceived flattening and fattening of the 3D shape of the object being photographed.