Near where you live, there may be a park with one or more statues or busts of famous people. Take a trip there, or to a museum where photography is allowed. Stand in front of the statue and, first, take a photograph of the depicted person from the front, as shown in this photo.

A sculpture of the face of an elderly man with a sober expression on his face. His eyes face forward.

Then move to the right and take at least one photograph of the same statue from a different angle (but the same eye level), roughly as shown in this image:

A sculpture of the face of an elderly man with a sober expression on his face. His eyes are turned slightly to the left.

Then move to the left and take one or more photos from corresponding angles:

A sculpture of the face of an elderly man with a sober expression on his face. His eyes are turned slightly to the left.

You print the pictures you have taken on a normal printer. Then find a board made of wood or another material, on which the pictures are taped in this way:

A printed photo of a sculpture of the face of an elderly man with a sober expression on his face. The paper is taped to a wooden board.

The board must be large enough for the pictures to be attached next to each other. What does the series look like? About like this?.

3 views of a sculpture of the face of an elderly man with a sober expression on his face. According to the perspective of the photos, the face looks towards the left, straight forward, and towards the right.

You will probably agree that a bust of a person looks something like this if you move in front of it and study it from different angles. The depicted man, who is looking straight ahead, will only have eye contact with the viewer provided that the viewer is directly in front. There will be no eye contact from any other angle.

However, the question is whether we will experience a flat image in the same way? Both flat and three-dimensional objects change with changing viewing angle, but not in the same way. So, let’s imagine that this portrait was not a three-dimensional sculpture, but a photograph. (After all, we are dealing with photographs; photographs of busts.) We then start from the first image that we printed out and affixed to the plate above, and then take a photograph of the photograph, first from the front… .

A printed photo of a sculpture of the face of an elderly man with a sober expression on his face. The paper is taped on a wooden board.

… and then from an oblique angle:

A printed photo of a sculpture of the face of an elderly man with a sober expression on his face. The paper is taped on a wooden board. The photo has been captured from a low point towards the right of the photo.

This way we can create a new series and it looks like this:

3 photos of the sculpture of the face of an elderly man with a sober expression on his face. Photos 1 and 3 have been pulled slightly to the respective side, rendering the photos asymmetrical.

There is still a difference between the photographs taken from the front and those taken from the side, but the difference is not as great. Those photographed at an angle are only slightly narrower. And what about the look? Which of these images makes eye contact with us?

Now consider what was said in the chapter about Ptolemy and Mesarites. Is it any wonder that some people found this effect mysterious?