My personal discovery of layering and some reflections.
I confess that, although I am professionally a computer scientist and my passion for photography dates back to when I was a teenager, I have never loved analogic photomontage techniques, digital manipulation as well.
The layering technique is quite new to me and I have now started to do some practice with photoshop. This experience made me reflect more deeply on this issue, and I drew some considerations, which may seem trivial for those who have more experience than me.
First of all, I understood that layering is a technique applicable to many, if not all, forms of visual representation, from painting to graphics, from sculpture to photography, from cinematography to theatre.
As for the theatre, in Italy, we have an admirable use of layering in the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, created by Palladio and Scamozzi. The stage is rectangularly dominated by a proscenium with five openings.
In order to obtain depth with a perspective game, streets can be glimpsed through the openings.
The visual effect of depth is obtained through several levels, built with dimensions that perfectly respect the laws of optics and, in particular, of perspective.
Each level (section) is positioned in such a way as to give the viewer the feeling that the stage is much deeper than in reality.
All images:
(accessed on 08/03/2021)
In this context, the technique of layers (sections) is used to optically manipulate one of the three dimensions.
In the case of painting and photography, which, by definition, are two-dimensional, the layers are deposited on a flat surface for other purposes.
In painting, the "glazing" technique has been used since ancient Egypt, passing through Raphael, Caravaggio, Flemish until modern painting.
Essentially this technique consists in depositing on the canvas several layers (layers) of color or varnish so that the upper layer allows transparencies.
In this way, a sense of depth and transparency is obtained.
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| Rogier van der Weyden, "Portrait of a woman", 1446 |
In this painting by the Dutch painter, we can clearly see the transparency effects of the dress and the upper part of the head through the veil, obtained with a masterful use of glazes.
These techniques are part of a pictorial genre called, in French, "trompe-l'œil" (literally "deceives the eye") which aim to induce the observer to perceive three-dimensionality from a two-dimensional surface.
In their own way, the artistic works of the Cubists and Dada were also composed of several levels.
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| Juan Gris, papiers collés |
In photography, the technique of superimposing the layers has been used, since the late nineteenth century, with another purpose: to create an image that does not exist, or rather, that did not exist at the time of the photograph, through the superimposition of multiple films (analog layers) or digital images (digital layers).
This in-depth study on the use of levels in other artistic disciplines has allowed me to have a more organic and conscious approach to the technique of levels in the digital world, by analogy.
I was led to maintain a link between the physical and digital worlds.
Nevertheless, fully understanding all the tools and functions that Photoshop offers us as a metaphor for what is physically done in the darkroom is not easy.
In the darkroom, the quality of the result is linked to the manual skill and painstaking attention to detail. In the digital ecosystem, the number of choices and functions to be mastered just to simulate the single, manual, act makes everything more complex.