Jos Stam, Senior Research Scientist at Autodesk, wonders whether photography is, in fact, the best way to depict reality. Jos was invited to comment as part of the Photography Changes Everything initiative from the Smithsonian Institute.
With the spread of digital imaging, a more recent fallacy concerning the relationship of photography and realism is that more megapixels inevitably yields more realism in any given image. But we only have to look at Rembrandt’s portraits to see that this is not true. He famously said that people shouldn’t look too closely at his paintings as the smell of oil paint would sicken them. As in the case of caricatures, Rembrandt’s paintings, and especially his self-portraits, give you the impression of looking at a real person. Consciously or not, Rembrandt knew how our brains would interpret his blobs of paint…
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