superimpositions of montage endowed photography
with effects of fragmentation and simultaneity that
superceded even those of painting. At once violent
and seamless, montage culminated the photographic
transcendence of traditional perspective by shattering
the continuum of pictorial space and time—realism
and illusion could be grafted onto the same plane.
Again and again, the evasion or warping of per-
spective served as the touchstone for different
twentieth-century photographic practices. In his
innovative writings and pictures from the 1920s,
the Russian avant-gardist Alexandr Rodchenko
inveighed precisely against the photograph shot
‘‘from the belly button,’’ calling for alternative
perspectival axes in photographic practice. The
‘‘worm’s-eye’’ view, in particular, became a staple
not only of Rodchenko’s images (as in his 1927On
the Fire Escape), but also for contemporary Rus-
sian filmmakers seeking alternatives to conven-
tional photographic space. Rodchenko inverted
and distorted perspective, framing objects in nor-
mally unseen dimensions and drawing out an alter-
native ‘‘realism’’ through unusual angles.
In a vein similar to his Russian Constructivist
contemporaries, the artist and theorist La ́szlo ́ Mo-
holy-Nagy argued for photography as an innovator
of new conceptions of space and time in modern
society. Experimenting with painting, photomontage,
and photograms, Moholy-Nagy believed that photo-
graphy could supplement and even enhance percep-
tion. For example, using photomontages (like his
Leda and the Swan[1925]) or X-ray-like photograms,
the photographer-constructor could invent fantastic
spaces and structures, which might be realized in
some utopic future. Like his Russian peer El Lis-
sitzky, Moholy-Nagy considered the rote me-
chanics of perspective as fossilized relics of a
different era, made obsolete by the technological
advances of modernity. For these artists and the-
oreticians, experimental photography could help
to bridge the gap between imagined space and
lived space, the gap between art and life. No
longer shackled to one rigid perspective, photo-
graphy’s ‘‘plasticity’’ served as both a metaphor
and crucible for revolutionary conceptions of
space, architecture, and urbanism.
In later twentieth-century practice, composite or
‘‘piecemeal’’ montages (such as those of David
Hockney) propose alternative renderings of per-
ceived space, including multiple perspectives, pa-
noramic distensions, and mobile viewpoints. If
photography can approximate human vision, these
images suggest, it is only by incorporating into the
image the inconsistencies of ocular perception. ‘‘Per-
spective,’’ in such photographic endeavors becomes
not a prototype to be imitated, but rather aprocess
that stages its own eccentricities.
AraH. Merjian
Seealso:Camera Obscura; Capa, Robert; Com-
position; Dada; Image Construction: Perspective;
Montage; Panoramic Photography; Photogram;
Postmodern; RepresentationFurther Reading
Bowlt, John E. ‘‘Alexander Rodchenko as Photographer.’’
InThe Avant-Garde in Russia 1910–1930: New Perspec-
tives. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980.
Crary, Jonathan.Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and
Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1990.
Elkins, James.The Poetics of Perspective. Ithaca, NY: Cor-
nell University Press, 1994.
Jay, Martin.Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in
Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993.
McQuire, Scott. Visions of Modernity: Representation,
Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Camera.
London: SAGE Publications, 1998.
Moholy-Nagy, La ́szlo ́. ‘‘Space-Time and the Photogra-
pher.’’ InPoetics of Space: A Critical Photographic
Anthology. Edited by Alan Yates. Albuquerque: Univer-
sity of New Mexico Press, 1995.
Panofsky, Erwin. ‘‘Die Perspektive als‘symbolische Form.’’’
Liepzig and Berlin:Vortra ̈ge der Bibliothek Warburg,
1924–1925, 1927; as Perspective as Symbolic Form.
Translated by Christopher Wood. New York: Zone
Books, 1991.
Pirenne, M.H.Optics, Painting, and Photography. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Snyder, Joel. ‘‘Picturing Vision.’’ InPoetics of Space: A
Critical Photographic Anthology. Edited by Alan Yates.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
Wright, Lawrence. Perspective in Perspective. London:
Routledge, 1983.
Yates, Steve, ed.Poetics of Space: A Critical Photographic
Anthology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1995.PERSPECTIVE