Carl Vondick Hosts Talk with Aaron Hertzmann (Adobe)

Why Do Pictures Work? Explanations From Real-World Vision
Speaker: Aaron Hertzmann (Adobe)
Host: Carl Vondrick
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2025
Time: 2:30 PM
Location: CSB 453

Abstract: I outline possible answers to the long-standing question of why pictures work: why can people look at a painting or photograph, and see a depicted subject, rather than just marks on a page or lights on a display? Observers with no prior experience with pictures can understand some kinds of pictures, indicating that picture understanding is not solely a product of experience or culture.  I argues that picture perception can be explained as a product of several properties of real-world vision. First, the fact that humans can understand certain real-world phenomena—refraction, reflection, cast shadows—as simultaneously surface phenomena but also images of an underlying cause explains why we can see pictures as depictions and not just markings.  Second, the fact that viewers can understand real-world scenes with unfamiliar combinations of objects explains our ability to understand many different styles of depiction. For example, we can understand black-and-white photos of people because, in real-world vision, we could recognize a familiar person who had been painted gray. Third, our robustness to visual defects and other difficult viewing conditions explains our ability to understand styles of pictorial textures, like paint strokes.  Extensions of these basic ideas can explain depiction in many different visual styles, including photographic tone reproduction, line drawings, silhouettes, cartoons, painterly styles, and more. The proposed models of picture understanding could significantly inform future analysis of perceptual mechanisms, picture aesthetics, and the nature of different styles of depiction.

Zoom Link: Upon request @[email protected]