Historical Note: Linear Perspective

I generally try to avoid (linear) perspective in photographs, but it is a powerful effect. Especially for trains.

R-1 cars being unloaded at Bush Terminal, c. 1931
Credit: New York Transit Museum Lonto / Watson Collection

Renaissance artists loved it. It gets weird with horses.

The Battle of San Romano, Paolo Uccello, 1435–1460.

I don’t have a lot to say about perspective from a technical point of view. It’s math and easily calculated. The camera can’t help but do it unless you actively suppress what the camera wants to do. I learned its rules with a pencil and straightedge.

I do think that precisionist painting is under-appreciated. It ties photography to painting in an idealistic mid-20th century flourish that that is so cinematic as to to have become invisible in our modern cinematic age (how’s the water?).

What makes Charles Sheeler’s paintings wonderful isn’t just the perspective. It’s the color.

Golden Gate, Charles Sheeler, 1955.