Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

This paper explores the notion of an image and its relation to lived perception by examining Japanese 18th and 19th century perspective prints intended to be used in a peepboxes and zograscopes. This study also refers to current psychological research to explain the effect of these prints. In Japan in the mid 18th century a ban on foreign books and images was relaxed allowing the importation of Western prints and painting treatises. Artists were able to utilize this material to create linear perspective images. Accompanying a growth in Western studies in general, Western lenticular devices like telescopes and microscopes were being imported. These prints and optical devices promoted a change in the regime of visuality. These new compositional techniques and viewing devices came together in the development of uki-e (lit. floating picture) prints that utilized linear perspective as their primary appeal and were often used in conjunction with peepboxes or zograscope viewing glasses. In comparison to the traditional Asian painting formats of scrolls or screens where space is composed so the eye can drift over the surface, liner perspective prints assumed a single viewpoint that was restricted further through these viewing devices. How such prints produce their effect can be understood by appealing to theories of perception that conceive of the visual cognition as consisting of two interconnected systems. In short, the perception of pictures is conditioned by these two systems, and because such devices inhibit surface cues, it decouples these systems and enhances the effect of depth.