Essays on Painting

THE BRAIN TAKES OVER
We also see what we believe, without our being aware of it. When we pay
a great deal of attention to something, our brain overrides our eyes and
magnifies what we see.
I shall always remember when I was a boy, getting my first camera for a
Christmas present. I couldn’t wait to try it out of course and I went to the
Bishops Park and exposed my first film. The last exposure I used to take a
photo of a swan from Putney Bridge. I centred it in the viewfinder and took
every precaution against camera shake. When the results came from the
chemist I was thrilled with them all. However I couldn’t find the picture of
the swan. I puzzled for a while over a rather dull picture showing a bridge
parapet and a vast expanse of river. Closer inspection revealed, in the centre
of this, a tiny swan.
Before we were married my wife went on a holiday to East Africa. As part
of this she took many photographs. In a set of transparencies of the Murchison
Falls there was one particular one which to me seemed to show
nothing but trees, and furthermore, trees a long way away. “What on earth
is this one?” I rudely demanded. “Fish Eagles”, she replied. We had to look
very closely with a magnifying glass before we saw the tiny shapes above
the trees. Obviously another case just like the swan.
The brain
has a way of interfering
with
our vision
without our
even being
aware of it.
Using a Galileo
primitive
refracting telescope,
Huygens
drew
these views of
Saturn, had he
22
Budapest Cafe