1. Joel Snyder, "Picturing Vision," Critical Inquiry 6 (1980): 499-526.

2. René Descartes, La Dioptrique , in Discourses on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology , trans. P. J. Olscamp (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 93.

3. Ibid., 91.

4. David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 202 (emphasis mine).

5. Leonardo da Vinci, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci , ed. J. P. Richter (London: Phaidon, 1970), 1:142. Leonardo's eye- camera obscura comparison is discussed by Lindberg, Theories of Vision , 164, and Willem van Hoorn, As Images Unwind (Amsterdam: University Press, 1972), 123-30.

6. Descartes, La Dioptrique , 91.

7. Leonardo da Vinci, Literary Works , 1:142.

8. Several examples are illustrated in Helmut Gernsheim, The History of continue

Photography (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969), 47-51. Gernsheim also provides a useful history of the camera obscura , 17-29.

9. Quoted in Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650 (New York: Garland, 1977), 156. The first four chapters of Wheelock's book provide a detailed discussion of optics, perspective, the camera obscura , and visual perception.

10. We will return to this question in chapter 4. For a full discussion of the historical and theoretical aspects of visual perception, see Nicholas Pastore, Selective History of Theories of Visual Perception, 1650-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).

11. Quoted in Wheelock, Perspective , 145, 138.

12. William M. Ivins, Jr., Art and Geometry: A Study in Space Intuitions (New York: Dover, 1946), 32 (Ivins's emphasis).

13. Leonardo da Vinci, The Note Books of Leonardo da Vinci , ed. E. MacCurdy (New York: George Braziller, 1955), 992. Leonardo also recognized that the effects of perspective were enhanced by shading, shadows, and indistinctness of distant objects (aerial perspective).

14. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting , quoted in Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 87.

15. For a concise discussion of the influence of medieval optics on Renaissance painters, see Lindberg, Theories of Vision , 147-68.

16. Quoted in William M. Ivins, Jr., On the Rationalization of Sight (New York: Da Capo, 1975), 15.

17. In Book Two of On Painting , Alberti uses the image of a veil to describe this process: "it is like this: a veil loosely woven of fine threads, dyed whatever color you please, divided up by thicker threads into as many parallel square sections as you like, and stretched on a frame. I set this up between the eyes and the object to be represented, so that the visual pyramid passes through the loose weave of the veil." Quoted in Edgerton, Renaissance Rediscovery , 118.

18. Ivins, Rationalization of Sight , 32.

19. André Bazin, What Is Cinema? trans. H. Grey (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 11, 12.

20. Quoted in E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation , 2d ed., rev. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 247. For a counterargument see M. H. Pirenne, Optics, Painting, and Photography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) and "The Scientific Basis of Leonardo da Vinci's Theory of Perspective," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 3 (1952-53): 169-85.

21. Bazin, What Is Cinema? 11.

22. For further confirmation of this point, see Snyder, "Picturing Vision," 520-21, and Lindberg, Theories of Vision , 280 n. 99.

23. Peter Galassi, Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1981), 32.

24. Ivins, Art and Geometry , 109.

25. R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing , 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, World University Library, 1973), 176. For counterarguments see Pirenne, Optics , especially "The Scientific Basis," 170.

26. Gregory, Eye and Brain , 175. break

27. Ivins, Rationalization of Sight , 14; Art and Geometry , 108.

28. Bazin, What Is Cinema? 12, 14.

29. Ibid., 21.

30. José Argüelles, The Transformative Vision (Berkeley: Shambhala, 1975), 25; Stan Brakhage, "State Meant," Metaphors on Vision (New York: Film Culture, 1963), n.p.

31. Brakhage, "Remarks Following a Screening of The Text of Light ," Canyon Cinemanews (March/April 1975): 7.

32. Edgerton, Renaissance Rediscovery , 91-123.

33. Argüelles, Transformative Vision , 106.

34. Claudio Guillén, "On the Concept and Metaphor of Perspective," in Comparatists at Work , ed. S. Nichols and R. Vowles (Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell, 1968), 77.

35. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: BBC/Penguin Books, 1972), 16.

36. Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 30. For more on ideological analyses of the cinematic apparatus, see Baudry and Comolli, cited in note 21 of the Introduction.

37. Stan Brakhage, "The Camera Eye," Metaphors on Vision , n.p.

38. Stan Brakhage, classroom discussion, recorded 11 May 1973, SUNY at Buffalo, Media Center, Inc.

39. Brakhage, classroom discussion, 11 May 1973.

40. Brakhage Films (Boulder, Colo.: Stan Brakhage, [1988]), 6.

41. Alberti, On Painting , in Edgerton, Renaissance Rediscovery , 87.

42. P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-1978 , 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 438.

43. Michael Snow, "Letter," Film Culture 46 (1967): 5.

44. Guillén, "Concept and Metaphor of Perspective," 38.

45. Sitney, Visionary Film , 70.

46. Sidney Peterson, The Dark of the Screen (New York: Anthology Film Archives and New York University Press, 1980), 20.

47. Among the variations on Emshwiller's and Peterson's techniques are Stan Vanderbeek's use of a "fish eye lens" in Spherical Spaces, No. 1 (1961) and Francis Thompson's filming of distorted reflections in N.Y., N.Y. (1957).

48. Sitney, Visionary Film , 276.

49. Sitney, Visionary Film , 384-85. Quotation from Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (London: Penguin, 1972), 29. (First published in 1937.)