When did Visualization become 'pre'- visualization?

[Vaughn]

Vaughn, I think you are right. I actually have Minor White's original book...

So do I and I thought of just scanning the cover, but you covered it well.

I do most of my visualization looking at the GG -- I can spend a lot of time under there. So before I set the camera up I am previsualizing...visualizing the visualizing I will be doing under the darkcloth.

[Drew Wiley]

All this nonsense would be a lot simpler if prints were just routinely displayed upside-down.

[Vaughn]

All this nonsense would be a lot simpler if prints were just routinely displayed upside-down.

Mine are printed backwards...but I guess that does not really count since we do not see a backwards image on the GG.

[kminov]

‘Visualization is based on what is seen, whereas previsualization is based on what is foreseen.’
Keith A. Williams

[Darin Boville]

Mary Street Alinder, in her excellent new book "Group f.64" offers a bit of evidence for this debate.

She attributes the phrase "pre-visulaization" not to Ansel Adams but to Edward Weston. Page 14.

She also mentions an earlier article by John Paul Edwards that appears to be talking about the same thing but not using that term. Page 78.

--Darin

[Jim Becia]

First of all, previsualize is not in any dictionary. The definition of "visualize" is "to form a mental picture of something or someone." So to previsualize would mean to form a mental picture before you form a mental picture. Makes little sense.

‘Visualization is based on what is seen, whereas previsualization is based on what is foreseen.’
Keith A. Williams

Actually, "visualization" is defined as "the formation of mental visual images" or "the act or process of interpreting in visual terms or of putting into visual forms."

[tgtaylor]

Well, in their defense it should be recalled that neither Adams nor Weston went beyond the 8th grade in school.

Thomas

[Darin Boville]

First of all, previsualize is not in any dictionary. The definition of "visualize" is "to form a mental picture of something or someone." So to previsualize would mean to form a mental picture before you form a mental picture. Makes little sense.

I think you are confusing yourself, Jim. "Visualize" and "pre-visualize" have clear, distinct meanings. Consider these three sentences:

1. Darin visualized the photograph of the apple.

2. Darin pre-visualized the photograph of the apple.

3. Darin, while making a photograph of an apple, took into account all of the technical controls available to him, including those that would be applied later on, so that the negative he made of the apple would lead to a print that matched what it looked like in his imagination rather than simply recording the apple in a straightforward way.

The meaning of sentence #2 and #3 are essentially identical. They are distinct, and usefully so, from the meaning of sentence #1 (which in no way suggests that I am making a photograph nor suggests that I am doing it in an unusual manner).

"Pre-visualize" is an economical way to say quite a lot.

The term also has historical weight. The term comes from the sense that a photographer just presses the button and the camera takes the picture, that photography is above all a mechanical process. The term "pre-visualize" emphasizes that, for serious workers at least, this relationship is reversed and the camera (and a host of other tools) are servants of the photographer and that it is a long list of creative choices made by the photographer, prior to "clicking the button", that determine the photograph's result. The term stresses that the photographer is an artist and that photography can be an art.

"Pre-visualize" has also been in continuous usage for nearly a century now, as I mentioned above. As a technical term I doubt it will appear in many general dictionaries but it is still a word, and a good one.

Embrace your photographic history!

--Darin

[Jim Becia]

I think you are confusing yourself, Jim. "Visualize" and "pre-visualize" have clear, distinct meanings. Consider these three sentences:

1. Darin visualized the photograph of the apple.

2. Darin pre-visualized the photograph of the apple.

3. Darin, while making a photograph of an apple, took into account all of the technical controls available to him, including those that would be applied later on, so that the negative he made of the apple would lead to a print that matched what it looked like in his imagination rather than simply recording the apple in a straightforward way.

The meaning of sentence #2 and #3 are essentially identical. They are distinct, and usefully so, from the meaning of sentence #1 (which in no way suggests that I am making a photograph nor suggests that I am doing it in an unusual manner).

"Pre-visualize" is an economical way to say quite a lot.

The term also has historical weight. The term comes from the sense that a photographer just presses the button and the camera takes the picture, that photography is above all a mechanical process. The term "pre-visualize" emphasizes that, for serious workers at least, this relationship is reversed and the camera (and a host of other tools) are servants of the photographer and that it is a long list of creative choices made by the photographer, prior to "clicking the button", that determine the photograph's result. The term stresses that the photographer is an artist and that photography can be an art.

"Pre-visualize" has also been in continuous usage for nearly a century now, as I mentioned above. As a technical term I doubt it will appear in many general dictionaries but it is still a word, and a good one.

Embrace your photographic history!

--Darin

Darin,

I guess we will just have agree to disagree on this. I think of previsualize much like "irregardless." There is no such thing.

[Mark Sawyer]

Minor White wrote a fair amount about visualization in The New Zone System Manual, (not sure about the first version). He divided the visualization process into two parts, here in direct quotes:

"Previsualization: Visualizing the photograph while studying the subject"

"Postvisualization: When printing a negative, remembering back to the plan for the photograph. Or projecting forward, to new combinations."

So White did have specific meanings in mind when using the terms, the words just got muddled through mis-use and misunderstanding through the years. And he did attribute the term to Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.