Picture perception: Toward a theoretical model.

Abstract

J. J. Gibson's new theory of picture perception is described, and a program of research within his framework is outlined. An analysis of pictorial information is proposed in which a systematic investigation of the structural components of pictures and their varying effects on perception is seen as preliminary to the postulation of hypothetical pickup mechanisms. The basic components of pictures are described, and literature is reviewed in the problem areas of distorted and impoverished information, observation from the wrong station point, coexisting flatness and depth information, and the ambiguity of .the source of a single projection. The feasibility of the Gibsonian enterprise is demonstrated, and further avenues for research into a structural analysis of pictorial information are pointed out. A picture is a delimited surface with markings on it that represent something. This article is concerned with pictures in the Western post-Renaissance mode; namely, that attempt to represent, by means of structural equivalence of some order, the layout of surfaces in the world. Alternative modes of representation, perhaps requiring alternative analyses, are beyond the scope of this article. By what means can a picture be said to represent, to bring clearly before the mind, the segment of the world pictured? The aim of this article is to demonstrate the feasibility of extending J. J. Gibson's theory of perception via motion-generated information to an adequate theory of frozen pictorial information and to explicate the problems that must be dealt with in any comprehensive theory of the perception of pictures. The problems to be dealt with herein are the use by artists of modified linear perspective, caricature, impoverishment of information in outline drawings and black-and-white photographs, the coexistence of flatness and depth information, observation from the wrong station point, and the ambiguity of a single projection (i.e., the same projected form can arise from an infinite variety of shapes).