What do we see when we look at a photograph or a work of art? For some time I have been influenced by the Twentieth Century Russian writer, Viktor Schklovsky (1893-1984), a prominent member of the Russian Formalist School of literary criticism. For Schklovsky, a purpose of art is to make the familiar unfamiliar (ostranenie = “defamiliarization”) (Art as Technique, 1917). As a consequence, the viewer is made to look[…]
