The book is not specifically directed to photography. The book is an elementary book on the psychology of perception and vision. The book is suitable for a college freshman or sophomore art class. The chapter titles are:
1. SELECTION.
2. GESTALT GROUPING.
3. MEMORY AND ASSOCIATION.
4. SPACE, TIME, AND COLOR.
5. CONTOURS.
6. ILLUSION AND AMBIGUITY.
7. THE MORPHICS.
8. PERSONALITY.
9. SUBLIMINALS.
10. CRITIQUING PHOTOGRAPHS.
11. RHETORIC.
APPENDIX A. ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS.
APPENDIX B. ANSWERS TO SELECTED EXERCISES.
APPENDIX C. ADS FROM THE PAST.
Essentially every page contains a figure. There are plenty of color figures. Many or most of the figures are quarter page figures or half page figures. The quality of the color figures is excellent. Only a handful of photographs in the book are from famous photographers. There is one picture by Dorthea Lange, illustrating a girl with balloons, her image centered between certain round objects on the wall behind her, a photo by William H. Jackson, showing repeated sandstone shapes, a photo by Edward Weston illustrating the technique of grouping, a picture by Henri Cartier-Bresson depicting symbolic association, a photo by the author (R.D. Zakia) showing biomorphic shapes (shapes in nature that resemble human forms), a photo by Man Ray, showing similarity between a woman's back and a violin, and several others.
One wonders why most of the examples in the book are from graphics, oil painting, advertising, or from generic photographs. The year is now 2007, and there should be no shortage of photographs created by famous photographers, e.g., Dorthea Lange, Joel Sternfeld, Marion Post Wolcott, Martin Parr, etc., for use in teaching all the lessons shown in this book. The book might also be criticized for its occasional very elementary approach, for example, in its very brief commentary about Adobe Photoshop.
Overall, the depth of the writing is geared to the beginning college student. However, it is likely that even older adults will find something new, for example, in the disclosure of the Ostwald System, the Pantone Color Formula Guide, the CIE system of color, the "Cornsweet effect," and optical illusions classified as, e.g., "ebbinghous," "jastrow," and "delboeuf." Just for the record, it might be noted that page 63 has a diagram of a "poiuyt," an optical illusion that appeared on the cover of Mad Magazine in March 1965.
This gives examples of two amazing things disclosed by the book. An optical illusion comprised of hybrids of two photographs, changes depending on your viewing distance. Page 161 of Zakia's book shows this kind of illusion, where the hybrid is of a calm face and an angry face. Depending on the viewing distance, the face is either calm or angry. This illusion was so amazing that it made me cry out in surprise. Another illusion is a photograph of a woman posing in front of a tall blade of grass--a narrow leaf of some sort. Due to the shading in the cleft of the leaf, the illusion is that the woman has a crack or crevice in her face that splits her face in two(page 179).
If I lost my copy of the book, I would not buy another. The book simply cannot be characterized as being "about" photography. For a book that is really "about" photography, I recommend Why People Photograph by Robert Adams and Light Readings by A.D. Coleman.
The author, Richard D. Zakia, is Professor Emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has taught in many areas of photography including graphic design and multimedia design. During his 34 years at RIT, Dr. Zakia served as the chair of the Fine Art Photography Department and Graduate Program in Imaging Arts, and for a six-year period was a photographic engineer in development and research at Kodak. He is the recipient of the Eisenhart Outstanding Teaching Award and the author/co-author of 12 books on photography.
