Week 7 Outline

Week 7

Still images: Painting and photography

A stilled image, one that freezes time forever in a powerfully arresting moment, will always have the capacity to capture our attention, and the stilled moment will always be a vital component of visual communication because there is no way to escape its underlying power. So how do paintings and photographs capture our gaze and affect us? The spatial organisation of a painting is not innocent. It depends on conventions, has effects and it produces a specific relation between image and spectator. For example, perspective which dominated Western painting for centuries provides a means of representing three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface.