REMINISCENCES: The Birth of ‘Felix’

My arrival in this world was not just unplanned; it was an accident. I was an accident… hehehe. After the birth of my two older sisters, my mother suffered a burst appendix. The initial operation was botched, resulting in extensive septicaemia within her abdominal cavity. Following a second, emergency operation, my parents were informed that they would not be able to have any further children.

After seven long, uneventful years, against all prophecies by the medical profession, I arrived. Our house-doctor at the time told my mother in the early stages of pregnancy that she should accept that her abdominal swelling was not the expected harbinger of the arrival of a bundle of joy (as I have turned out to be); rather, my mother’s bloated abdomen was the visible symptom of a severe case of constipation (Thanks Doc!). Yet, you can not keep a good man down, as they say. My family and friends would counter this sentiment with reference to stubbornness (I prefer steadfastness and dependability) and an indomitable will (I prefer drive and a passion for life). Three-and-a-half years later, my younger sister, Barbara, was born – this time around the word ‘stubborn’ does apply.

With time, the difference in age between us siblings has become insignificant; however, while still young, we children clearly split into two natural groups: the old sisters (Christel and Ursel) and the young’uns (Bärbel, as we call her, and myself). The only character trait that harkens back to the division of us siblings in younger days is that Bärbel, like me, does not mind roughing it in order to be out in the bush – our older sisters prefer a tiny bit more comfort and refuse to ‘go camping’.

Bärbel and I have not had many opportunities to spend time in the wilderness together. However, on the few trips that she has accompanied me, she has acted as a magic charm; the wildlife seems to line up to see my little sister – I simply do not have this charisma. And so it proved to be, once again, on a trip to Balule Camp in the central region of the Kruger National Park (South Africa).

In early December a few years ago, Bärbel, Jacqui and I spent a marvellous week camping at Balule. The weather was tropical – fierce heat during the midday hours, with drizzle and short thundershowers in the mornings and afternoons. So much for the quality of light for photography.

As the trip was nearing its end, we still had not spotted lions. For me personally, this is not an issue – however, Bärbel had not seen wild lions for more than a decade. So we headed off one morning on a longer drive than usual, following a dirt road running south from Balule Camp, parallel to the beautiful low range of the Lebombo Mountains. This area of Kruger has open grasslands studded with short shrubs, interspersed with denser bushveld along the seep-lines in gullies.

We had travelled quite far down the road and had arrived at a point where we wanted to turn back to Balule. We spotted a sizeable herd of blue wildebeest and decided to stop and enjoy a cup of coffee (and a cookie each) in their company before turning back. We had chatted and enjoyed some birdwatching, when Bärbel suddenly piped up, “There's something wrong with that wildebeest cow over there.”

In the centre of a clump of milling wildebeest, one cow was kneeling down on her front legs, keeping her rump and rear lifted well off the ground. At quite a distance and through the heat haze it looked as though a twig of wood was protruding from her behind. The cluster of wildebeest kept moving in circles, with the injured cow getting up and walking a few paces before resuming her strange kneeling position. As the group moved closer, we could see that the object sticking out from the cow’s rear end was indeed a pair of tiny hooves. This was not an injured cow; this was a mother in labour and about to give birth.

About 25 minutes into our coffee-break, it was obvious that mommy was in agony. Whether standing, kneeling or lying down, this wildebeest cow was not comfortable at all. Yet all other cars merely passed by us, even after Bärbel had informed many of the drivers that something spectacular was taking place. By now, I was following every move of this wildebeest mummy, watching her closely through a telephoto lens despite the harsh mid-morning light. At one point, I could see that her waters were breaking; however, a large piece of the amnion itself had also been pushed out of the mother’s vulva, forming a fluid-filled sac.

To us, the mother's labour seemed very prolonged. I am used to the birth of farm animals, but to me this wild beast seemed to be in trouble. Forty minutes on from the time we had first noticed her distress, she still had not given birth. Bärbel and I were becoming more and more doubtful that this would be a normal birth. We increasingly convinced ourselves that the calf must be dead by now and that the mother was in desperate trouble. She had weakened visibly and had moved into a spot of shade under a small thorn-tree. The ground beneath the tree was swathed in tall grasses and herbs. The wildebeest cow stood facing us alone – all the other females had abandoned her to her fate.

I turned to ask my sister for another cup of coffee. When I looked again, the cow was sniffing at something in the grass. It was a mass of wet, matted brown-black fur. There had been no signs of labour for the last ten minutes or so – the ‘birth’ must have been very swift, with the mother facing us. We had missed the event. The blob at the mother's feet did not move; the labour had obviously been too traumatic and too long.

Minutes later, the blob sat up suddenly – its extremely long front legs acted as support for the chest and the wobbling head. The calf was alive. Trying to hide tears of joy, I peered at my sister in the rear-view mirror; a huge smile threatened to split her face in two and tears were streaming down her face unhindered. “Its name is Felix,” Bärbel said matter-of-factly, referring to several episodes in our distant youth when we had jigged about and mimed singing to a 45-inch record featuring the ‘Adventures of Felix the Cat’ that we had listened to as youngsters.

Within only eight minutes, Felix had found his feet, had found his mother's teats, had enjoyed his first-ever mid-morning snack and had been greeted by several other wildebeest cows. He was following his mother on unsteady legs (wobbling to-and-fro and jumping at the same time) to catch up to the wildebeest herd that had started to move off into the bushveld as though a subtle signal was being obeyed.

When driving through the bushveld just south of Balule Camp in the years following Felix's birth, I have often wondered whether I had been a witness at the birth of one of the wildebeest I was seeing. Was any one of them called ‘Felix’?

A SENSE OF PLACE: Palmietpan – A Changing Landscape

Every landscape tells its own story; every landscape discloses an ancient history of how it came to be. A history of deposition and erosion, formation and shaping, degradation and re-moulding. A story of the geological processes and the weather that carved and shaped it. The story tells too of recent modifications to those parts of the landscape that are less resistant, more accepting of alteration; at the same time, other parts of the landscape display an unyielding antagonism to change. Whether a landscape’s story is gentle or more violent depends entirely on the specific landscape that is being observed and of its own unique geology and the much more recent history of its occupation (or not) by human beings.

Is there a single word that expresses “a feeling of place, a sense of place”? The word ‘landscape’ seems wholly inadequate and very restrictive too. In some sense, a landscape describes the lie of the land, the topography of a place. Once captured in an image, a photograph, a sketch or a painting, a landscape acts as a portrait of an area. Like portraits of living beings, the ‘landscape’ we peruse also hints at the character, the unique qualities of a select portion of scenery that enticed the visual artist to record it. At the same time, the ‘landscape’, the portrait of a place, also reveals the personality and sentiment of the visual artist herself; it reveals the emotional response by the artist to a specific location.

Ever since the start of our relationship, I have been accompanying my wife, Jacqui, on three or four annual trips to an old family farm in the western Free State Province of South Africa. In this part of the interior of the country, the topsoil is sparse and the ground beneath is gravelly at best, if not outright rocky. Unlike the vast, sandy, maize-producing plains to the north-east and east, this part of the Free State is sheep and cattle country. Here the horizon is flat and very distant, broken only by an occasional low ridge or kopje. The sky always dominates the landscape beneath it. On a clear winter’s day, the flat land is overarched by an immensity of deep-blue air; when moisture fills the air during the summer months and thunderstorms construct themselves, the land lies still and silent, as though cowed by the towering cloudscapes above it.

Along the southern boundary of the family farm lies a sizeable pan – a completely level expanse of salt-encrusted, dark-grey clay. Along its perimeter grow sedges – sometimes (falsely) referred to as palmiet in old Afrikaans. From these two features the farm derives its name: Palmietpan. In the seventeen years that I have been visiting the family farm, I have never seen the pan filled with water.

On our most recent trip at the end of July 2020, as we approached the farm during the late afternoon, the pan lay before us, glistening. Black-winged Stilts, various species of ducks (including South African Shelduck and Egyptian Geese), Kittlitz's and Three-banded Plovers, and even a small group of Lesser Flamingos were feeding in different locations and at different depths of water along the shoreline of the pan.

The pan forms a dimple in the otherwise flat countryside of this part of the Free State province. The rim of the pan rises in a very gentle slope from the floor of the pan to the height of the grasslands and thorny scrublands some 100 to 150 metres higher up. Now, at the height of winter, the slope all around the pan was covered in various tall, dry grasses and low thorn scrub, with stunted Sweet Thorn (Acacia (Vachellia) karroo), Buffalo-Thorn Jujube (Ziziphus mucronata), honeythorns (Lycium spp.) and Wild Asparagus (Asparagus laricinus) predominating. On the farm property, on the north-eastern shoreline of the pan, the rim incorporates a small, fairly narrow level step on which stand two groves of very large, ancient Karee (Searsia lancea) trees, now accompanied by scrubby Ziziphus mucronata bushes.

On this ‘platform’, in the immediate vicinity of these old trees, particularly on sheets of rock exposed by rain and wind, countless San stone artefacts lie scattered about fully exposed. Cutting implements, scraping implements and the occasional arrow tip can be found here. Close-by, a large area of ground is covered in chips and flakes of stone knapped off fist-sized rocks unknown eternities ago.

This intriguing area has never been studied in detail. Apart from identifying the stone tools as “of San origin”, linked with a comment of “we have sufficient examples of such stone tools”, those South African universities that have been approached with a select sample of the stone implements have not taken any further interest. Yet the landscape of Palmietpan seems to indicate a much more fascinating tale.

I am not an archaeologist. Any thoughts I express and any claims I may make in this short blog are not grounded in factual evidence. Yet, Palmietpan conveys a kind of ‘sense of place’; it hints at a significance to the San hunter-gatherers in a bygone era. To me, at least, the size of the pan itself, the sheer volume and variety of rock chips and stone tools found in this very small area, and the location of the finds on the only level shelf overlooking the entire pan seem notable. Together, they suggest a far greater import of this site to the aboriginal inhabitants than a mere happenstance locality fit only for short-lived occupation by a few bands of San at some unknown era in the past.

The pan is large and, as this winter has proved, it will hold water for months after the last rains have fallen at the end of summer. Alone this possible source of water (albeit unpredictable and seasonal) in a region that experiences long, dry winters would make Palmietpan an area of consequence. The amount of stone chips and flakes that can be found here speak of a site at which the working of stone and the crafting of stone tools took place over a significantly long period of time – to leave such copious evidence behind, work must have taken place here over at least several seasons. Add to this the countless implements found here that were never finished and were simply thrown aside. For a while at least, Palmietpan must have formed part of a stone-crafting workspace. And then the ledge itself adds a definite sense of significance. The view from this only piece of level ground along the rim of the pan covers the entire perimeter of the pan and its surrounding sparse, scrubby thorn-veld. Any animal, any human, moving about in this flat land would have been noticed by a keen observer occupying the level shelf.

For many days, I have searched the immediate vicinity of the pan relentlessly for a possible source of the rock material used in the knapping process to make these stone implements. A very thin layer of dark-grey, clay-like rock is exposed near the platform with the tree groves. This layer is overlain by several metres of gravel and soil. Yet the incessant excavations of golden moles and the deep tunnel systems mined out of the hard, overlying soil by ground squirrels do hint at a possible source, deep beneath the topsoil, of rock similar to that used long ago by the San for the manufacture of the stone tools.

At Palmietpan, the landscape is being churned over by these fossorial and burrow-excavating small mammals. Chunks of calcrete and other rock material, not found at the surface, are heaved out of their tunnels by the ground squirrel families. The mounds of the golden moles are littered with stone fragments of precisely the type of rock worked by the San long ago. Beneath the topsoil there must lie further evidence of an occupation, albeit seasonal, of this landscape long ago by a significant number of San artisans.

For its inhabitants, particularly so for human beings, different landscapes hold different significances. More than that, the same landscape acquires diverse meanings for different individuals too. Different individuals will each react in a singular and personal way to the same landscape. (Each individual human probably can and does envisage or imagine her or his beloved landscape. Often this landscape is part of a precious memory from past travels; sometimes (I suspect in humans other than myself too), this ‘landscape’ is purely imaginary. Each of us probably conveys in the mind her or his own idyllic landscape.)

A (particular) landscape is often idealised when it is depicted or described. As humans, our penchant for romanticism often imbues a landscape with meaning; it attributes to a landscape a personification and a role that reflects our deepest hopes and desires. The significance of a landscape to us as individuals, families, communities or even nations is often entwined with personal or historical episodes that have shaped our lives: a locality, a landscape, is intimately associated with spaces of personal crisis or of battle, places of hardship or places of plenty, scenes of loss or of gain. We look at landscapes through our own or collective spectacles. We depict our chosen landscapes with these cultural stimuli in mind, so that our view of the land is always emotionally charged and highly subjective. Moreover, for us, the observers, the landscape itself takes on an individuality, a nature that, together with our cultural or private accretions we append to a place, gives rise to an endless and fascinating mythopoeia of landscape.

So too it is with Palmietpan: the water of the pan, its shorelines of mud and soil, its gentle slopes of thorn-scrub and tall grasses, and its inhabitants over many aeons of time. The landscape of Palmietpan speaks of an oasis, a significant place in the otherwise water-scarce landscape of the western Free State.

On one of the smaller expanses of exposed rock on the shelf with the two groves of Karee lie the desiccated remains of a long-dead Cattle Egret. This tableau of rock, bone and feathers serves as a reminder to any conscious observer that possession of a landscape and its occupation too are transient indeed. Landscapes seem much longer-lived, and yet, like organisms, they change over time, they age and mature, not only in their geological features, but also in their significances, in their meanings to the current and past inhabitants of the landscapes, in their ‘sense of place’.

VISUAL CONNOTATIONS: II – The Elephant in the Wood

 

The human brain is essentially a pattern recognition device. Pattern recognition is based fundamentally on the detection by the neural system of ‘similarity’ and ‘difference’ in the patterns of stimulation received by the prefrontal cortex of the brain. The system of pattern recognition does not require conscious awareness. However, unless pattern recognition is linked directly to a reflex response, it does imply that a prior observation of a significant pattern exists as stored information in the mind of an observer to which a ‘new’ pattern can be compared.

The ability to be sensitive to your surroundings (and to the state of your internal environment), the ability to sense in general, is based on pattern recognition. Sensitivity always results in an ‘if… then’ situation. Pattern recognition and sensitivity in general are also based on context; ‘if this occurs…, I last found that…’ The response to the stimulation, either ‘for’ or ‘against’ the input, is based on reflex action or on cognition and its concomitant interpretation by the brain. From the outset, sensitivity in organisms has allowed the evolution of simple forms of navigation through a hazardous environment and escape behaviours, for example.

 

With the evolution of more complex brains comes more complex analysis of the sensory input – this results in pattern processing, recognition and even pattern synthesis within the brain. Learning of significant patterns and memory of the patterns is also increased greatly. One example of this ability by complex brains is the formation of search images of their prey within the brains of many predator species. By first learning and subsequently recognising specific clues present in the shape, colouration and behaviour of common prey species, many predators are able to increase significantly their ability to spot and hunt cryptic prey. However, by focussing on one prey motif too narrowly, the predator will become worse at spotting other types of prey. This phenomenon of using pattern recognition – matching an observed pattern of a specific prey item with a learned pattern recalled from memory – is referred to as a predator having formed a search image for a certain prey species.

With ‘consciousness’ come decision-taking, reasoning, abstract thought and language, intelligence, invention, imagination, the pondering over the significance of patterns and communication of and about patterns. It is likely that all of these most human abilities are based in very large part on the enhanced pattern processing skills of the human brain (more specifically of the expanded prefrontal cortex present in humans).

 

As humans, we literally ‘picture’ reality inside of our minds. With language and sound (again based on pattern recognition), we hear our thoughts, we hum a tune silently, we converse with ‘our selves’ and others in our minds. With our expanded prefrontal cortex, superb pattern processing and pattern recognition skills allow humans to encode and integrate perceived patterns. Moreover, we are able to transfer such patterns to other individuals via description (using language) and by depiction in the visual arts. We not only perceive patterns; we also fabricate patterns within our minds. All patterns, perceived or imagined, are reinforced by familiarity, emotional experiences, learning, instruction (and even indoctrination). Our emotions (love, pleasure, anger, fear, for example) are all heightened states of stimulation. Emotional arousal enhances the memory and recall from memory of events that have occurred during those particular episodes of emotional experience. Pattern processing too is heightened by perception of patterns in an emotional setting.

 

Given a human mind’s phenomenal ability to process and recognise patterns, it should come as no surprise then that humans, with their imagination and inventiveness, will actively seek out and identify patterns in their environment. However, not all of the discoverable patterns necessarily carry any significance or meaning. Often, patterns are detected that may at first seem meaningful (such as ‘seeing’ a friend in a crowd of complete strangers); however, on further analysis, interpretation and reflection, the pattern is not what it seemed to be at first. The significance, the meaningfulness of the pattern, has evaporated upon the realisation that we are experiencing a misrepresentation. Similarly, identifying animal or human figures in clouds, as star signs in the heavens, as the rabbit in the moon (as examples), all are instances of the pattern recognition system in our minds imbuing erroneous meaning to otherwise misrepresented and misidentified patterns. Then again, our imagination (subjected to our personal convictions and beliefs) often simply ‘corrects’ current insignificant patterns and incorporates meaning or overrides non-meaning to give rise to a ‘true’ representation. Human history is replete with reported tales of visions.

Our cognitive ability to recognise patterns always includes detection of the pattern, a comparison or matching of the observed pattern with patterns that we have memorised (that is, patterns that we have experienced and learned before and can recall from our memory) and finally recognition (identification coupled with making meaning of the significance of the observed pattern). Thus misidentification can take place at three levels.

 

Perhaps the most obvious (and most easily understood) misrepresentations of reality arise from the perception of optical phenomena (such as the diffraction, dispersion, reflection and refraction of light). At the level of observation, we would have to add any inherent restrictions of our various sensory receptors and organs, such as the perception of after-images following intense stimulation of the photoreceptors and the presence of blind spots in the retinas of our eyes.

 

The second level at which misidentification can and does take place involves the mechanisms in our cerebral cortices of pattern processing, analysis and the comparison of newly sensed patterns with memorised patterns. The new input, the pattern of stimulation being received by our brain, must be matched against existing prototypical or template patterns stored in our memories. The initial comparison and possible matching to recalled patterns may prove to be sufficient for accurate pattern recognition if there is congruence between the sensory input and the recall from memory. Alternatively, further analysis of finer detail in the observed pattern may reveal a correspondence of noteworthy features shared by the two patterns, rather than a matching of the coarser patterns overall.

The final level at which misrepresentation during pattern recognition can take place involves the assigning of import or meaning to the observed pattern. It is at this level that our minds become easily influenced (even biased) by prior experience and learning, by memories and by our current emotional state. (Intoxication by a whole host of chemical substances plays havoc at this level as well.)

 

Nevertheless, in a ‘normal’ human brain, none of the misidentifications or misrepresentations that may arise at any one of the levels constitutes an error – none of these indicates a flaw in the pattern recognition system. Rather, in humans at least, the majority of such ‘mistakes’ are connected intimately to our cognition, our current reasoning, our hopes and beliefs, as well as our imagination.

As a photographer and avid reader of literature, I prefer to use the term ‘connotation’ when dealing with photographs that can evoke misrecognition of patterns in the viewer’s mind.

 

In literature, a particular word may suggest an additional idea, significance or sentiment that need not be a part of the word’s original denotation or meaning. Such an additional suggested or implied meaning is referred to as a word’s ‘connotation’. In works of art, connotation will evoke in the audience an association or will hint at a relationship to some object or concept that is not represented directly in the artwork. Connotation, then, inspires, suggests, implies, implicates notions that hint at additional possibilities of significance and meaningfulness that are otherwise left unexpressed in the work of art itself.

At a fundamental level, our enhanced human ability at and propensity for pattern recognition, together with our imagination and susceptibility to misrecognition of patterns, are precisely the phenomena that an artist will exploit during composition of an image. Composition involves the deliberate arrangement of visual elements to support and augment the subject (in the broadest sense) and the meaning assigned to it by the visual artist, while de-emphasising and negating the influence on our perception and the significance to our mind of the extraneous surroundings. Therefore, composition is the meticulous, intended manipulation by the artist of the pattern recognition abilities that all humans enjoy.

VISUAL CONNOTATIONS: I – Of Illusions in the Mind’s ‘Eye’

 

Ever since early childhood, I have watched clouds. As a photographer, I have added to this predilection the watching of waves, flowing water, patterns in sand, and more. As photographers, we are all essentially searchers for patterns of light.

 

All we see is light and nothing but light. Our visual experiences are based entirely on the reception of reflected, refracted, dispersed, diffracted light. The only addition to the sensation of vision is twofold. Firstly, analysis and interpretation by our visual cortex in the brain takes place of the impulses delivered from our retinal cells in the eyes by nerves. Then, possible ‘editing’ by our imagination follows this. We do not see a tree in front of us; we simply perceive light that has bounced off an object that absorbs some wavelengths of sunlight and not others, scatters some wavelengths but not all. Our mind, however, pretends that the object is actually there, that it is in reality what it seems to us – that is, a real, genuine tree and not a meaningless simulacrum or a figment of our imagination.

 

Our mind can do nothing else; for without this interpretation by our visual system that some of the patterns of light that we perceive indicate the presence of real objects (important as food, predators, shelter, for example), sight as an adapted sense could not have evolved. However, should we ever be able to interrogate a different species about what it sees, the answer we receive would astound us.

 

And so, from the very beginning, all sensations, not only sight, were limited to the perception of the stimuli provided by the patterns of the world and not the processes, the emergent patterns only resulting from underlying formative processes that are hinted at but that remain elusive. We humans are obsessed with pattern, in particular the diversity of patterns. For us, a miniscule difference between two otherwise matching patterns is imbued inevitably with interest, with importance; distinctions always indicate a significance for which we want to ‘know’ the reason. Identical patters too are significant because they represent another food item, another predator or another mate, for example. Our minds focus on difference and similarity.

 

Our attempts to set boundaries and to classify our experiences of the world around us probably are as ancient as the advent of our nervous systems, certainly as old as the advent of language. Just as ancient as language as well are our problems with our classification systems – if something fits here, it necessarily does not belong there – and thus the struggle begins to shoehorn objects, concepts and experiences into rigid frameworks of classification, usually arranged hierarchically to reflect some more of our mind’s biases. Alternatively, we hack liberally at existing categories, cleaving away ever-smaller pockets to house our favoured items, and so populating our classifications with sub-, meta- and hyper-taxa. Consequently, our perception of the world has become categorised into discrete entities, and we have lost the ability to perceive the fundamental unity of process that has shaped every pattern that we can sense in our surrounding.

 

Of course, this endeavour of classification does not end with the inanimate and animate world, but extends, by use and habit, into our own human existence and into our relationships with other humans. Since we focus intensely on the distinctions between patterns, we are often convinced that the boundaries we imagine and construct in our minds and knowledge are real; they are a true representation of hiatuses in reality, even in otherwise continuous patterns and processes. From there, it becomes almost inevitable that we should set and reinforce with significance the boundaries that we believe will be of help to us while we attempt to keep our own group safe and separate from the barbarians at the gate.

 

So, two quirks of our mind and our experiences, the hiatus between reality and our sensory experience of it and our mind’s obsession with pattern and boundaries, amalgamate with devastating outcome to limit our knowledge and imagination. It is the confusion and conflation of process and pattern that can and does befuddle our minds. Simple and well-known illustrations of our minds’ predispositions are optical illusions of various kinds.

 

Illusions, in general, are defined as instances of the perception and interpretation of sensory experiences that give rise to misrepresentations of reality – instances during which the experience differs from actuality. Illusions are not faults of our sensory systems; they indicate the physical and biological restraints of our systems and of our cognitive interpretation of the sensory stimulation received.

 

Optical illusions are a subset of sensory illusions; they are illusions arising from the workings of our visual system. Some so-called optical illusions are not really illusions as defined since they do not lead to misrepresentations of reality. Examples include the ‘bending’ of the straw as you immerse it in a glass of water, and the fact that ‘in reality’ the sun is already located beneath the horizon while you can still see it above the horizon at sunset.

 

These physical optical ‘illusions’ are really optical phenomena that arise when light is refracted as it travels across the boundary between media of differing optical densities. These are ‘strange’ realities and not faults of the visual system or a result of misinterpretation by our minds. The less strange optical phenomena like the dispersion of light in rainbows or halos do not qualify as optical illusions at all; yet in the process of the interaction of light with matter there is no significant difference between these less peculiar observations and instances of the ‘illusions’ of the refraction of light.

 

The fascinating, often mesmerising, misrepresentations of reality, the truly illusory visual experiences, are the result of ambiguities that arise in the processing and interpretation of the visual information received by the brain. These ambiguities are often triggered by unconscious assumptions and inferences of what the information ‘pictures’.

 

In the second instalment, I will explore further the illusions our minds experience or conjure up, and the implications that the human mind’s phenomenal ability at pattern recognition (and misrecognition) hold for the visual arts, including the craft of photography.