This was one of those email on sale alert impulse purchases I make for Kindle Books from time to time. It looked like it would fit into my current theme of reading on creativity and craft. It turned out to be a great intuition.
This a 25th anniversary editon of what is called in the blurbs “a classic bookâ€. Picture This is very simply a short, illustrated deconstruction of how some identifiable elements of an image (color, position in the frame, shape, distance from other objects) are interpreted by us emotionally. Since it’s a classic book and I readily agreed with almost all the observations, these truly appear to be universal, wired in aspects of brain function in interpreting the visual world. Often Bang takes exactly the kind of ecological approach I’d use, talking about why something would feel a certain way based on relationship or common experience without resort to theory or some evolutionary design concept. Quite simply, we can’t be sure how we got here, but here we all are. In fact, it would be interesting to know to what extent these observations hold true across cultures.
Right after I finished the book, I pulled up my public gallery in Flickr. It’s been a while since I actively used the app, but it’s a quick way to get an overview of my photographic work.
Looking at my work through the eyes of Bang’s book, it’s amazing how almost all of my images are restful, balanced and lacking tension. I chose this image from a few years ago as a good example. There are two objects in frame, the white paint square to the left and the remnant window sill on the right. There are the background gray and white color blocks. The main characters here are off center vertically, but balanced. They seem friendly as if they might be chatting with each other. Even though nothing is centered vertically, the greater weight of the dark object rests comfortably away from the picture edge and the the white square takes up the other side, getting close to the dark bar in its space.
Will my images change? Actually, I doubt it, given that this is how I see the world. Maybe more a reflection on me than on the art. Or both.