Nature: Macro (AMATEUR) - HONORABLE MENTION
The Sense of Order - urchins
Photo © Andrea RICCI
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The Sense of Order
A study in the psychology of decorative photography.
Gombrich's The Sense of order inquiry over the nature of ornament and the history of decorative art has been dubbed "a massive, erudite, brilliant, and magisterial tome" into the relation between culture, arts and cognitive psychology, particularly Gestalt theory.
Gestalt, says Gombrich, has been the first perception theory to systematically oppose the ‘theory of the recipient’; the theory that posits that our mind starts like a “tabula rasa”, progressively carved over time by the passive recording of stimuli. Gestalt denied the possibility of an ‘innocent eye’, an idea Gombrich himself had questioned in his Art and Illusion. Our mind, our vision, are systematically alert of the contrast between order and disorder, monotony and variety, the unforeseeable and the ‘redundant’.
Much of what surrounds us offers a constant solution of continuity, and in Gombrich sense, it’s far from being beautiful, it does not respect a good decorative scheme.
Unless we choose to look otherwise and start noticing.
Paying attention to detail, moving closer to things allows sometimes to detect unsuspected patterns and intriguing which invite the eye to travel around a meaningful shape or to observe, at a glance, some of nature's most perfect examples of visual symmetries and rhythms.
In the almost perfect geometry that assembles a sea-urchin there is a link between the construction simplicity of its forms and the simplicity of our perception of them.
Perception of order is the underlying process which make us conceive and understand what we call decoration. A mechanism which is at the root of the entire artistic experience. If Art is about describing, painting, photographing the invisible, that - a sense of order - is the invisible artists have a chance to make visible.
His current photographic projects focus on countries in crisis, symbolic urban locations, weak expressions of societal transition, the expression of popular religiosity and the notion of aesthetic order. Influenced by 6x6 Medium Format photography, his pictures are mostly square (1:1) or panoramic (1:2,75 - 1:3).
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The Sense of Order
A study in the psychology of decorative photography.
Gombrich's The Sense of order inquiry over the nature of ornament and the history of decorative art has been dubbed "a massive, erudite, brilliant, and magisterial tome" into the relation between culture, arts and cognitive psychology, particularly Gestalt theory.
Gestalt, says Gombrich, has been the first perception theory to systematically oppose the ‘theory of the recipient’; the theory that posits that our mind starts like a “tabula rasa”, progressively carved over time by the passive recording of stimuli. Gestalt denied the possibility of an ‘innocent eye’, an idea Gombrich himself had questioned in his Art and Illusion. Our mind, our vision, are systematically alert of the contrast between order and disorder, monotony and variety, the unforeseeable and the ‘redundant’.
Much of what surrounds us offers a constant solution of continuity, and in Gombrich sense, it’s far from being beautiful, it does not respect a good decorative scheme.
Unless we choose to look otherwise and start noticing.
Paying attention to detail, moving closer to things allows sometimes to detect unsuspected patterns and intriguing which invite the eye to travel around a meaningful shape or to observe, at a glance, some of nature's most perfect examples of visual symmetries and rhythms.
In the almost perfect geometry that assembles a sea-urchin there is a link between the construction simplicity of its forms and the simplicity of our perception of them.
Perception of order is the underlying process which make us conceive and understand what we call decoration. A mechanism which is at the root of the entire artistic experience. If Art is about describing, painting, photographing the invisible, that - a sense of order - is the invisible artists have a chance to make visible.
About author:
Andrea RICCI is Italian, but lives and works in Brussels. He is a journalist and former contributor to La Repubblica; he has a PhD in Communication and Information Sciences and a personal history which anchors him to Florence and Rome, to Art History, Renaissance and Baroque. A participant observer when working on photojournalism projects, Andrea has a keen interest in documentary and conceptual photography .His current photographic projects focus on countries in crisis, symbolic urban locations, weak expressions of societal transition, the expression of popular religiosity and the notion of aesthetic order. Influenced by 6x6 Medium Format photography, his pictures are mostly square (1:1) or panoramic (1:2,75 - 1:3).
BACK TO GALLERY
