Look and Distance: The Problem of Depth in the Image Studies

Abstract

The article considers the question of the relation of the visual and the subjective in images. Author shows the connection between the visible and the subject, relying on the reasoning of the French phenomenology M. Merlot-Ponty, dedicated to the depth. According to the author, this dimension, unlike the other two (length and width), expresses the correlation of the visual and the subject. In this regard, it introduces the inclusion of the look in the visible as well as another element of this relationship — the horizon. This inclusion, related to depth, is considered further through reference to the analysis of the anamorphosis by J. Lacan, where the look turns out to be directly related to the perspective and its distortion in the anamorphosis. The connection of depth and look leads to another area, namely, projective geometry, in which both elements can be expressed — the look, as a position included in a projection, and the horizon as a projection of a line at infinity. The structure of the image is associated with the tension between these two positions — the view and the horizon that is infinitely distant from it. The position of the subject in the visible is thought through its splitting into the seeing and the body, into what is available to the body and what is available to the look.