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Why would they need the specific concept of a photo negative? A negative is just a reversal of light/dark. They knew of such things. They knew primary colors, t

Why would they need the specific concept of a photo negative? A negative is just a reversal of light/dark. They knew of such things. They knew primary colors, too. Painting and mixing colors is not exactly modern -- it has been around for many centuries. Artists practice playing with light and color as basic exercises, and have done so for hundreds if not thousands of years. Switching light and dark is a fairly basic concept to artists, not an innovation that required photography to exist in order to conceptualize it. In the same vein, why would it have to be made of paint? Paint is simply pigment inside a medium. Dyes are also pigment, in different medium, made to soak into and bind with cloth instead of being layered on top. I'm not saying that is how it was created, but I highly doubt that the skills to do so did not exist.

d_theorist 2y ago
Why would they have done it?
- codingdave 2y ago
  I have no idea, but that seems completely orthogonal to what technique was used.
  - d_theorist 2y ago
    It’s extremely relevant to the question, which is what the negative nature of the image has to tell us about the relative probabilities of the two hypotheses (miraculous hypothesis vs fraud hypothesis). In my view, it is a big problem for the fraud hypothesis because you have to explain why and how it was done. At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown, and when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images, why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative? There is no record of anybody even recognising that it is a negative until the 19th century. So, it’s not at all what you would expect given the fraud hypothesis. You would expect a straightforward image.
    - margalabargala 2y ago
      > At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown It was not called a negative until the 19th century when photography came about, because before that a photo negative wasn't a thing. Before that it was just a "painting with light and dark reversed". > when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images There are many examples. See woodcuts, for example. The concept of creating the negative of an image was common. > why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative? Because they, and the intended consumers of their piece, were not stupid and all were aware of the pattern that a person would leave on a cloth. Presumably it was not more difficult to drape a cloth over a body and observe the staining pattern then than it is today. > You would expect a straightforward image. No, you would expect a straightforward image, because photographs weren't invented until many centuries later, apparently.
    - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
      They inverted the colors because they were creating a painting of an impression of a face on a piece of cloth. If you put a piece of cloth on your face, the parts of the face that touch the cloth are the ones where color would be transferred from your face to the cloth, and which are therefore darker. The parts of the face that are more recessed, like the areas around the eyeballs, would not touch the cloth, and so less or no color would be transferred from the face to the cloth in those areas. In other words, the part of the face that would receive more shadow in a normal image (and would be darker) would receive less pigment in the painting (and would be lighter).
      - briffid 2y ago
        A face impression would be very distorted when moving from a 3D face to a 2D sheet. So it is not an impression.
        InsideOutSanta 2y ago
        I didn't say it was an impression, I said it was a painting of an impression.
- exe34 2y ago
  you can ask this for any non- photorealistic art.
svieira 2y ago
It was not dyed - the fibers that are discolored are discolored only on one side.
thordenmark 2y ago
They did not know primary colors. They weren't discovered until the 19th century, even then it took another 100 years before they figured out that red blue and yellow are not the primaries.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

d_theorist 2y ago

Why would they have done it?

codingdave 2y ago
I have no idea, but that seems completely orthogonal to what technique was used.
- d_theorist 2y ago
  It’s extremely relevant to the question, which is what the negative nature of the image has to tell us about the relative probabilities of the two hypotheses (miraculous hypothesis vs fraud hypothesis). In my view, it is a big problem for the fraud hypothesis because you have to explain why and how it was done. At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown, and when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images, why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative? There is no record of anybody even recognising that it is a negative until the 19th century. So, it’s not at all what you would expect given the fraud hypothesis. You would expect a straightforward image.
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    > At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown It was not called a negative until the 19th century when photography came about, because before that a photo negative wasn't a thing. Before that it was just a "painting with light and dark reversed". > when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images There are many examples. See woodcuts, for example. The concept of creating the negative of an image was common. > why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative? Because they, and the intended consumers of their piece, were not stupid and all were aware of the pattern that a person would leave on a cloth. Presumably it was not more difficult to drape a cloth over a body and observe the staining pattern then than it is today. > You would expect a straightforward image. No, you would expect a straightforward image, because photographs weren't invented until many centuries later, apparently.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    They inverted the colors because they were creating a painting of an impression of a face on a piece of cloth. If you put a piece of cloth on your face, the parts of the face that touch the cloth are the ones where color would be transferred from your face to the cloth, and which are therefore darker. The parts of the face that are more recessed, like the areas around the eyeballs, would not touch the cloth, and so less or no color would be transferred from the face to the cloth in those areas. In other words, the part of the face that would receive more shadow in a normal image (and would be darker) would receive less pigment in the painting (and would be lighter).
    - briffid 2y ago
      A face impression would be very distorted when moving from a 3D face to a 2D sheet. So it is not an impression.
      - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
        I didn't say it was an impression, I said it was a painting of an impression.
exe34 2y ago
you can ask this for any non- photorealistic art.

svieira 2y ago

It was not dyed - the fibers that are discolored are discolored only on one side.

thordenmark 2y ago

They did not know primary colors. They weren't discovered until the 19th century, even then it took another 100 years before they figured out that red blue and yellow are not the primaries.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]