Errol Morris: 'We've forgotten that photographs are connected to the physical world' - video

            A photograph is a true investigation into a world in which the photograph was actually taken. This man’s book starts with two photographs from a war. He has said that photographs are neither true nor false and photographs are nonsense to others. We use words as respect to the world and not photographs. You can never see the absence of something in a photograph, only everything that is visible. A photograph among other things decontextualizes everything; you only see a swatch of 2-D reality that’s been torn out of the fabric of the world. No one ever has bothered to talk to people about why they took their pictures and what the circumstances of the photograph were. Photographs become iconic because they become powerful as we see so many powerful things in photos.

John Berger

A large part of seeing depends on habit. Perspective makes the eye the center of the visible world. Originally paintings were part of a buildings design, now they can be reproduced very easily. Everything around an image is part of its meaning. Prime example is the icon in which people venerate upon it. The faces of paintings become messages and the reproductions distort the image. The camera has multiplied its meaning but lost its original meaning. Paintings are essentially silent and still so they are easily manipulated by movement and sound.

David Hockney "What the Camera Can't Do"

He draws what he sees, very simple and to the point. He uses the same colors that are very literal, mostly greens and blues. Brushing the paint on is the only lines that he makes, he doesn't draw anything first. Photography doesn't quite show everything that you see in person, so by painting he tries to capture everything that he sees. It is said that he is trying to "keep the eye alive" because the camera just doesn't cut it.

Masters of Illusion (Part 1 and Part 2)

The people of this video are film makers who are trying to make a flat background as 3-D as possible. Renaissance artists were working with a canvas instead. The perception of depth is what makes things 3-D. To understand vision illusion you have to understand the use of vanishing points. If everything lines up with the lines that vanish then it looks like then there is an illusion of great depth and three dimensional lines. A building can look realistic as well as people if there is modeling and shading involved. If the artist takes time to really work hard on the painting or drawing then it can look very real.