VIRTUAL REALITY
Virtual Reality (VR) is anything pretending to be
real while not existing by proof. The pretext can
relate to a person, an animal, a place, a time, or any
situation one can think of. Although the term VR
became commonplace at the end of the twentieth
century by its usage within computer imaging, and
is generally defined as the creation of ‘‘realities’’ by
digital means, it also denominates an old practice
in all forms of imaging. In principle, each visual
image presents a reality of itself, which is not con-
gruent with any given reality that can be perceived
by human eyes. But within technical media as
photography and computer imagery, VR shows
realities that are relatively easily proven not to be
existing in spaces accessible by human bodies.
The word virtual is drawn from the Latin vir
meaning man. Erasmus of Rotterdam introduced
virtusin 1531 as man’s honour to be acquired by
learning. Later, the Frenchvirtuesimply meant the
pretention of being an honourable man and thus
the word gained its connotation of fraudulence.
Early art historians started to use virtual as a
description of spaces not to be entered, i.e., the
depth of a painting. VR in this sense is a pleonasm,
doubly coding both the method of transforming
visible space as well as the result in its metaphorical
meaning. Thus VR refers to the fabrication of any
staged technology in images, be they photographic
or made by computers.
VR in photography as well as in computer ima-
gery contains three discernable elements, and nor-
mally two out of these three are combined in any
one picture: staging, alteration, and montage. Sta-
ging means the preparation of an image by setting
the scene, putting actors into costumes, and placing
lights in specific ways. Altering images is any effort
taken after exposure, including darkroom techni-
ques and software effects. Mounting part of differ-
ent images into one picture is a method well known
to photographic history from the start and has
attained its own history as artistic method from
the 1920s onwards.
Staging surely is the oldest method of achieving
VR effects in theater, art, and photography. Used
well from the start of the medium, it reached its
height around 1900 in vernacular photography:
painted backgrounds, columns and balustrades
made ofpapier mache ́,and costumes for the sitters
were a common treatment in studio portrait photo-
graphy, which gradually fell out of practice after
World War I. The often self-ironic game with what
could be one’s social role and what is not was
pursued in countries with great social differences
and traditional rites, particularly in Latin America,
Africa, and South East Asia. Painted backgrounds
with efficacious lighting were still present at the end
of the twentieth century in all studio portraiture,
although their use is diminishing.
Staging, of course, is the basis of film. From
Georges Me ́lie`s’ Voyage Dans La Lune to Fritz
Lang’sMetropolisto Merian C. Cooper and Ernest
B. Schoedsack’s King Kong runsalonglineof
movies more famous for their staging and effects
than for their direction or screenplay. These films
directly influenced advertising photography. Adver-
tising is not only product presentation but VR as
well, thus the vicinity of film staging to setting the
scene for photographs is given quasi naturally. Fash-
ion photography is directly linked to film as the
worlds and lifestyles presented have to be a dream
for the majority of those looking at the pictures.
Edward Steichen and Baron Adolph de Meyer
plied this trade forVanity FairandHarper’s Bazaar
but their work only laid the ground for more com-
plicated arrangements like in the work of Lejaren a`
Hiller and George Hoyningen-Huene. A continua-
tion of this line in the late twentieth century is
marked by Cindy Sherman as she switches the roles
of stage and reality: the artist no longer plays a role
but is presented in acquired identities.
The method of altering images after exposure is
more subtle but has a powerful impact on the
suspension of disbelief that can dictate how a
viewer perceives what is real in a photograph and
what is not. Fine art photographers, as exemplified
by the Pictorialists at the turn of the nineteenth
century, wanted to give their pictures the feeling
and metaphorical qualities of paintings or classical
prints as part of their struggle towards acceptance
for their art. In a similar attempt, the exponents
of Straight Photography expected their prints to
be fine art in themselves—and put enormous
emphasis on details of light and shadow as well as
on a glossy surface. Ansel Adams’ Zone System canVIRTUAL REALITY