What Turns Pictures On

Pictures and the things that we take them to represent have very little in common with one another, though the psychology of art (most famously the account formulated by E.H. Gombrich) often proceeds from the assumption that their visual behavior is demonstrably similar in the eyes of the beholder.

Equally important, yet critically overlooked, are forms of presence that are unique to pictoriality. This paper will explore such experiences, and the conditions in which pictures can be activated by the perceptual parameters afforded by their environment. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which these distinct properties of depiction are often ignored or suppressed in photographic reproduction.