Art history ( Latin American Photography) (NO RESEARCH PAPER) - Essay Example

Thus combining the subject of an eye hoisted above pedestrian invokes mystery and multitude of meanings. Reversal of negative such as in Alvarez Bravo’s La Optica Moderna has been used for a long time. Print makers and typesetters are very familiar with this process albeit its use has not always been for art. Painters used this method by using lenses to cast reverse image of object. In this case, a flipped image caused by a reversed negative to cast a positive image on a paper to produce a reversed text.

This is also the case of the eye except that it is not obvious that it is also a reversal because it cannot be read but rather a subject whose orientation does not change with the reversal of the negative. Rendering the artwork in reversed negative and then printing it in black and white or monochrome on a photography paper made Alvarez Bravo’s La Optica Moderna modern. It however strikes a paradox because the subject depicts ancient meanings such as deity and mystery especially with the inverted text but rendered through a modern medium of photography.

Aesthetically, the image also became more appropriate of where it is hoisted which is in an optical shop except that the symbolism that the artwork suggests that there is “more than what meets the eye” or that it is not just a commercial signage. Especially when it is rendered in monochrome that marks a serious air about the image. It invites its viewer not just to visit the optic shop for a commercial or medical purpose but to examine closely what does the image means. The reversal of the image may intrigue the viewer of how it was rendered but rather than being curious of how a reversed negative was printed on a photography paper, the viewer will be move more by the eerie feeling of seeing an eye looking over them with a reversed text.

It is interesting to note that the artwork was rendered in a photograph and not in