Portrait

Look at a ‘great’ photo – that is, a photo by one of the many great photographers. Rotate it 90 degrees (either way). Are you seeing new things / new aspects / a different story in the photo? Almost certainly the answer is ‘yes’; the photo is showing you something you hadn’t registered before. The message has changed – unsurprisingly – between the physical thing and you.So what’s happening?If photography is important to you, then I believe this twisting of the photo-to-person space has to be explored (by you). And by extension, understanding what is happening in rotated photographs may tell us a great deal about what happens, between the image and you, in ‘normal’, unrotated ones. We gain an insight too into visual artefacts – the visual arts and beyond – more generally.This simple idea of rotation is illustrated here with the help of 60 stunning portrait photographs. You'll discover works by some giants of photography, Dorothea Lange, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Walker Evans among them. Or – if you know these photographers already – you'll discover whole new ways of looking at their work. Give it a go – discover that you can see photography differently.____Peter FitzGerald is an artist, web developer, and former editor of Circa Art Magazine; he holds a doctorate in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford, and a degree in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.