Psychology and photography: chimneys dreaming and chimneys warriors

Abstract

The article covers two aspects related to Psychology and Art. The first aspect concerns the similarities found between photography and various Schools of experimental psychology. For instance, the scientists of Psychology of ethological theory, and Non-verbal communication (NVC), observe with particular methodologies the non-verbal messages that animals and humans transmit to their peers through expressions, posture, gestures. The same is done by photographers (those who use the “camera” with a good knowledge of the medium and a “photographic  eye”) when they look around, careful to catch an expression, any unusual attitude, or a gesture of friendship. Another School of psychology, the Gestalpsychologie (Gestalt: form, figure, configuration), attributes a decisive value to the perception of space, the foreground and the background, the perspective and vanishing points, the contrast between black and white. All aspects that effectively interest psychologists just as much as photographers. Finally, the second aspect relates to the art of Antony Gaudì and makes some hypothesis about the personality and behavior of the great architect, with regard to the construction of two houses, "Casa Batllo" and "Casa Mila": particularly because of the configuration or Gestalt of the "chimneys" that dominate the two buildings. In this study, cooperate each other psychological analysis and the art of photography. The last enables us to study also the details of the work of Gaudì, as can be seen in the pictures of this essay.