P = Playing with perspective and perception

To state the bleedin' obvious, pretty much everything is a matter of perspective. 
Point of view.
How we perceive the world. 

Technically, perspective is the way we view the world through our experiences and beliefs. While perception is how we interpret the world through our senses.

The guy in the image, who looks frighteningly as if he has a sword plunged into his left eyeball is actually using some sort of 17th century way of measuring a copse. It's about focus on the copse (trees), not the corpse (dude with skewered eyeball). Perception.

But then, of course, if we're talking about representing the world in art, perspective can mean something altogether different. Then it's about angle, the literal point from which you see and the way things appear to us up close or far away, or from a different angle.

Engraving by T Cook in the style of W Hogarth.  Credit Wellcome Library, London.
The original engraving served as the frontispiece to Dr Brook Taylor's Method of Perspective Made Easy", 1754 

I absolutely love the image above. Look closely and you will see it's filled with crazy wrong things that happen when an artist's sense of  perspective is out of whack. It's like a Georgian version of Spot What. 

Can you find the:

• dog improbably about to be hooked on fishing line
• trees obscuring sign which is actually in front of them
• man impossibly lighting traveller's pipe 
• suicidal cow
• problem with the engineering of the bridge.

Artists present unique perspectives of the world that can change the way we perceive it.
These fascinating gorgeous objects were specifically created to challenge our views of global health crises.

Fragile, glossy and to be absolutely honest, if they weren't carefully protected in glass cases I'm sure they'd be regularly touched ... because they are oh-so tactile, these are part of a series of amazing sculptures called Glass Microbiology by Luke Jerram.  

Magnified to almost a million times their size, and rendered transparent, he gives us a look at swine flu, HIV, malaria, small pox and E-coli.

And I have had lots of fun photographing them from different angles and editing various shots in multiple ways. But I won't bore you with those.

I'm including this handsome wood engraving of an architect's perspective view and floor plan from 1852 for no other reason than the name of the building it represents.


This is the Asylum for Worthy and Decayed Freemasons. 
Not bothered by perceptions of political correctness back then, eh!

During the month of April, I am participating in the Blogging from A–Z Challenge.

My posts will all feature images of and by the Wellcome Collection, Euston, London: the free destination for the incurably curious.