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“There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”
- fn-mote 1y agoA fascinating tour of 19th C France through the the photographs of one man. Captivated me much more than reading about the AI-enhanced-startup du jour.
- 3abiton 1y agoI wonder if we can actually quantify this effect: humans painting are "richer" in meaning than AI. But then once that is decypher the next step is to put an "AI" on top of it.
- lblume 1y agoI cannot really explain why, but I feel like each of these photos captures so much more about the respective person than a modern colored photo ever could.
- akomtu 1y agoPortraits are like long exposure photos where the artist watches a person and captures the right elements at the right moments.
- alpaca128 1y agoBack then photos were more expensive, rarer and taken primarily by professionals. It makes sense that they on average were more compelling to look at than the average picture taken today. But there are plenty of great modern colored photos.
- gsf_emergency 1y agoThose who can see but cannot look are condemned to a life of Art (whereas those who can look but cannot see to a life of Science)? Finally, those who can do both: life of Jobs
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- umvi 1y ago> and to slow the predatory opening of Japan that had begun with American warships’ arrival in 1854. Reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o&t=282s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o&t=282s
- h2zizzle 1y ago>The painter naturally visited Nadar’s studio fo a portrait; it captures an artist of fierce intelligence: As true as it might be in many cases, I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance. A brief meeting is bad enough, but a single photo? It's poetic to think that they tell us more about a person than they do.
- Noumenon72 1y agoA non-groady interpretation might be that we know Manet was intelligent, and the portrait captured that well; you might not be able to judge food by its photograph, but a photo that makes it look delicious when it actually is delicious has managed to capture the deliciousness. Personally, I don't find it groady anyway; pretty sure a neural network trained on IQs and photographs could find reliable signals of intelligence therein. I can imagine a species that evolved to conceal the appearance of intelligence, but in humans I think it's more something natural selection would try to broadcast.
- atoav 1y ago> pretty sure a neural network trained on IQs and photographs could find reliable signals of intelligence therein Yeah maybe, however as a life-long photographer and former freelance DoP I would heavily caution on then using those images to infer a persons intelligence from that picture. Because in my experience the number of false-positives and false-negatives is high. There are extremely intelligent people who always look like shit on camera, because they constantly move, so you always capture them with their mouth half open, mid blink. And then you have complete hollow-brains who look deep and dashing whenever a camera is around, but god forbid they open their mouth. So if anybody decided to make machines decide who is intelligent based on pictures (sounds like modern eugenics), the amount of false classifications would be exhorbitant and have real consequences for real people. And let's not forget that appearances can be altered, so once you use such a system those deemed to be most intelligent will be those who game it best. So judging intelligence directly is probably the more reliable way.
- michaelt 1y ago
- somenameforme 1y agoA related video series showing many places around the world in the 1900s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-UhDuKZ2OQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-UhDuKZ2OQ There's a lot of really interesting things to see there besides the sites themselves. The obvious one worldwide is that this is before the mass commercialization of clothing + planned obsolescence of such, which seems to have a very negative outcome. But one thing not so visible that's really interesting to see is how simultaneously stern everybody looks with no fake smiles or hidden gazes. People were willing to just stare at something or somebody odd. But that sterness is regularly belied by things like a couple of guys in their 40s happily putting on a fake fight in front of the camera, falling on their asses, and just basically playing around like school boys having a great old time - a far rarer site now a days.
- kmarc 1y ago> how simultaneously stern everybody looks with no fake smiles or hidden gazes. People were willing to just stare at something or somebody odd FWIW, the fake smiles and hidden gazes, to me the least, were always a North American thing. In fact, in Switzerland we have its opposite, the infamous "Swiss stare" :-) https://www.newlyswissed.com/about-the-swiss-stare/ https://www.newlyswissed.com/about-the-swiss-stare/
- soco 1y agoI actually don't like his tone in the article. Why should the Swiss even care what is perceived as rude other countries, staring or whatever? There's this common view that immigrants from poor countries should adapt and integrate, but if they're from western(er) lands they get to judge?
- tough 1y agothey're tourists and treat the places they visit like human-zoos
- aspect0545 1y agoSuper interesting. I recently learned that a lot of foreigners moving to Germany find that Germans are staring. It’s called the German stare. I wonder if staring is a Germanic thing. https://www.zeit.de/campus/zeit-germany/2023/01/culture-face-to-face https://www.zeit.de/campus/zeit-germany/2023/01/culture-face...
- nwhnwh 1y agoWhy I have to sign up first?
- gpvos 1y agoI did't have to. I don't know what you saw, but you can probably click it away.
- nwhnwh 1y agoOn mobile, you have to signup first.
- nalinidash 1y agoI am using on mobile,can read without signing up.
- falcor84 1y agoI'm ashamed to say that while I enjoyed the article and particularly the photos, I still can't quite parse what "cannot even look" means; does not understanding what it means make me one?
- lyu07282 1y agoEvery "imbecile" can take a photo, but not everyone can do photography. Is basically what he meant.
- GMoromisato 1y agoI interpreted as, some people can't be bothered to try seeing. They don't even know that they're missing something. But clearly other people interpreted it differently, so what do I know? I'm just simple programmer.
- tomatotomato37 1y ago. "[Photography] is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracted the greatest intellects, an art that excites the most astute minds -- and one that can be practiced by any imbecile." I like this quote.
- Koshima 1y agoIt's fascinating how much body language and facial expressions differ across cultures. While some societies value open, expressive interactions, others lean toward reserved or neutral expressions. I’ve noticed this in my travels, a simple nod or slight smile can mean very different things depending on where you are. I wonder if these cultural norms around eye contact and facial expressions have roots in deeper societal structures, like the emphasis on individualism vs. collectivism, or even the pace of life in different regions. What do you think? Could these small, often overlooked gestures reflect much larger cultural attitudes?
- marstall 1y agoI'd like to have a hackers news that was just posts like this!
- trgn 1y agoyou mean, about physiognomy?
- slackfan 1y ago>I wonder what these Japanese diplomats were thinking as they sat, so far from home, having their portraits taken with cutting-edge gadgets by this bohemian weirdo. If only there was a detailed first-hand account of the diplomatic mission to Europe which details this exact trip that's been widely translated to most European languages and is widely available.
- kayodelycaon 1y agoNot sure if this is sarcasm. I have no idea if this exists or not. If it does exist, I would like to read it. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- empath75 1y agoThere's actually a youtube channel that has a bunch of excerpts from various trips to the west (and other cross cultural journeys), if you're interested in that sort of thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvPxCuIspWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvPxCuIspWs
- pavel_lishin 1y ago> Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I think I can see in his deadened, ambitious eyes the character that would later lead Leopold to inflict immense suffering on the people of the Congo for personal gain. The spark of humanity that you can see in the eyes of so many of Nadar’s subjects just isn’t there. Or maybe the author's perception is colored by what we know of this man.
- ajkjk 1y agoWell yeah, that's why it has that disclaimer. Everyone knows there's an obvious bias there.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoSure, just feels like a weird thing to call out, especially when you've admitted the bias is there.
- sn9 1y agoGiven that it fit a pattern of commenting on what he perceived in all the other portraits, what exactly would you have had him do? He obviously isn't lacking in self-awareness. He was upfront about his possible bias.
- ajkjk 1y agoThis notion is everywhere and it's just dead wrong. It's still possible to think in the presence of biases. The fact that your opinion may be subject to some unconscious biased in some direction does not invalidate your opinion. Maybe it weights it in a way you're not aware of---but maybe not. Maybe they are fully aware of the fact that they could have some bias here but have enough data to think that their observation is still true in some significant way.
- wagwangbosy 1y ago[flagged]
- w10-1 1y agoMost HN posts are how to program, mainly focusing on new tools and ideas. But now the tooling is so good and the competition so fierce that the real question now is not how but what to program. For that, it's essential to see things through the eye of users, so you can see the value to them. This post imagines how Nadar saw his subjects, and how his subjects saw things. Not only is it a different time, but in most cases the subjects had a hand in history, we know now. To me that's the essence of product design: imagining a different world through the eyes of another, and understanding how to make a real difference. Products mostly focus on the present-market scale, but investments incorporate the full life cycle. The real power of the historical perspective is understanding how it's the latent value in the context that gives a new product its power, and how significant that can be over time, particularly when a technology becomes pervasive. Here the photograph far outdoes the samurai's sword in its influence, not just for images and history but as a demonstration of the power of recording light for science, medicine, etc. May this post inspire someone to make the next photograph.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago>For that, it's essential to see things through the eye of users, so you can see the value to them. The main issue is that the skills needed to make a product can be different from the skills needed to land a job in an organization. That makes it further muddy what to program.
- rootsudo 1y ago"But now the tooling is so good and the competition so fierce that the real question now is not how but what to program. For that, it's essential to see things through the eye of users, so you can see the value to them." It's always been that way. e.g. Infamous HN Dropbox post.
- paulorlando 1y agoThere's a newish requirement not to smile in US Passport pictures. I compared my new one (with the photographer-enforced requirement) and my old ones (smiling). That type of requirement has existed longer elsewhere. (Both for Hong Kong and PRC visas the no smiling requirement was there decades ago.) So the pendulum swings both ways?