Fine Art Photography: Figure And Ground

This is an older photograph taken in 1990 on film with a trusty Minolta XGM sporting an f/1.2 50mm lens. This photograph deals with the concept of figure and ground. The rest is left to your perception.

©1990 Figure And Ground Eric W. Hatheway All Rights Reserved

In visual perception, figure-ground is a type of perceptual organization in vision that involves assignment of edges to regions for purposes of shape determination, determination of depth across an edge, and the allocation of visual attention. Figure-ground is a critical process in perception because of its profound consequences for shape perception.

Aslo, figure and ground is a concept developed by media theorist Marshall McLuhan, which underpins the meaning of his famous phrase, “The medium is the message.” He used this concept to explain how a communications technology, the medium or figure, necessarily operates through its context, or ground.