Does “Photographic Realism” really exist?

[Heroique]

If “Photographic Realism” exists, have you captured it (or seen it) on film or paper?

What convinced you of its presence?

Or if it doesn’t exist, help us understand why.

Does “Realism” have an easier time in other arts, such as painting?

[Jay DeFehr]

If your question is; does photographic realism exist?, we need to know how you define the term, or you run straight down the "does reality exist" rabbit hole.

What's really on your mind?

[Sevo]

Well, Photographic Realism (a.k.a. Photorealism) has been a important artistic movement in painting and sculpture, starting in the late sixties, along with the rise of photography to an art form. How about a visit to the library? Ever since then there have been plenty of learned writings on the reality and realism of and in painting and photographs...

[Heroique]

Whoops, I mean “photographic realism” as an informal, conversational term, not necessarily a formal term of criticism or metaphysics.

For example, if someone at a museum exhibition (or looking through your portfolio) told you that a particular photograph showed “photographic realism,” how would your understanding of the term influence your reply?

Would you have already asked yourself what makes a photograph “realistic”? How important are the photographer’s aims in the matter, if at all? Is the claim merely a personal judgment, or one that might win a degree of objective approval?

[Jay DeFehr]

For example, if someone at a museum exhibition (or looking through your portfolio) told you that a particular photograph showed “photographic realism,” how would your understanding of the term influence your reply?


I would assume the person had little/no understanding of the terminology he was using, and politely nudge my portfolio from his hands. His comment would mean about as much to me as if he'd substituted "camera-ness" for "photographic realism".

I'm still not sure what you're getting at. Are you asking what are the attributes of a 2D image that might cause a viewer to mistake the image for the thing imaged? As in, "Wow! That photo of an apple looks like a real apple!"?

[Jim Michael]

Would a physical reaction to a 3D image, or more likely a 3D video clip, constitute photographic realism in your mind? E.g. you duck when the spear appears to come at you.

[Brian C. Miller]

Whoops, I mean “photographic realism” as an informal, conversational term, not necessarily a formal term of criticism or metaphysics.

For example, if someone at a museum exhibition (or looking through your portfolio) told you that a particular photograph showed “photographic realism,” how would your understanding of the term influence your reply?

I would reply, "Oh, that's nice." And I would wonder, "What the hey? It's a photograph." Any well-exposed, sharp photograph shows "photographic realism." It's just what it does. The real question is when it doesn't show "realism."

Consider this image:
74686

What does it show? A building, yes. Now, how close to "reality" do you think it is? When was the sky that color? When was the building that color, and should shadows be white? The clouds are a shade of blue. Yet you know that this is a photograph, genuine and unaltered. It is a Fuji Instax FP-100C print. But that isn't reality, is it? Are buildings built upon an abyss of black?

Or perhaps I yanked the darkslide without closing the lens first, and I realized my mistake partway through. (but now I know how interesting Fuji can get.)

Now consider this:
74687

Uh, looks decently real, like okay, eh? Blooming shrub out in the landlord's yard. Pretty normal. Same film, but it sure doesn't invoke images of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Photo looks real. Duh.

[Heroique]

Would a physical reaction to a 3D image, or more likely a 3D video clip, constitute photographic realism in your mind? E.g. you duck when the spear appears to come at you.

This reminds me of the famous contest between the ancient Greek painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Which could paint most realistically? Zeuxis painted grapes so real that birds flocked down to peck at the fruit. Hard to top that! Except that when Zeuxis asked Parrhasius to draw the curtain to show his own painting, Parrhasius revealed that the curtain itself was his painting! Parrhasius won – but it would seem that realism, by Jim’s test above, existed in both works. Makes me curious if a bird has ever tried to fly through anyone’s LF print of a landscape, proving a high level of photographic realism...

[Brian C. Miller]

Makes me curious if a bird has ever tried to fly through anyone’s LF print of a landscape, proving a high level of photographic realism...

Simple: photograph, from the outside, a window that's open. Now print that life-sized, and put it next to the original window, but close the window and pull the blinds. See if any birds smack into the photograph.

[Jay DeFehr]

The paltry spectral sensitivities of our best films don't come close to matching the vision of a pigeon.

[John Kasaian]

In court they call it evidence.

[Laron]

No.

[Sevo]

Would a physical reaction to a 3D image, or more likely a 3D video clip, constitute photographic realism in your mind? E.g. you duck when the spear appears to come at you.

As has been exploited over and over, stuff like that works perfectly well with very unreal animations - throw something as real as the tail of a pink talking dinosaur at the audience, and it will duck!

Indeed, the key point about the success of the first 3d ego shooters was that our perception has a very low threshold for what it accepts as reality when facing danger situations - stop the permanent assault and the seemingly so immersive Doom 2 scenery collapses into crude 16x16 pixel sprites.

[Leigh]

In the world of photography, "photographic realism" exists by definition. The process defines the term.

You point the camera at a subject and trip the shutter.
You have an image that accurately portrays the subject at the moment, assuming you didn't screw up. :D

When the PR term is applied in other arts, such as painting or sculpture,
the idea is to portray the subject as realistically as a photograph could.

So in our world, PR exists by definition.

- Leigh

[Jay DeFehr]

In the world of photography, "photographic realism" exists by definition. The process defines the term.

You point the camera at a subject and trip the shutter.
You have an image that accurately portrays the subject at the moment, assuming you didn't screw up. :D

- Leigh

Or decide to deviate from an "accurate" portrayal. Your characterization ignores the alternatives to a sharp, un-distorted, "straight" photo, by the myriad photographic techniques used to depart from a literal interpretation of what is before the lens. Just as there is photo realism, there must also be photo abstraction, impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, etc., etc.

[Brian Ellis]

I've always liked this statement from John Szarkowski:

"The simplicity of photography lies in the fact that it is very easy to make a picture. The staggering complexity of it lies in the fact that a thousand other pictures of the same subject would have been equally easy."

Since a thousand (at least, I'd say a million is closer to literal accuracy) different photographs of the same subject could have been made, which one would have been realistic? Or would more than one have been realistic and if so, which ones? Or would all of them have been realistic? Or would none of them have been realistic?

[Heroique]

You point the camera at a subject and trip the shutter. You have an image that accurately portrays the subject at the moment, assuming you didn't screw up. :D

Am I being too mischievous if I ask: at which “moment”?

For example, if I used 1/2 second, which of the “moments” inside this time lapse “accurately portrays the subject”? Which moment is most realistic? Was it the 1/30th near the middle of my exposure, or the 1/8th toward the end?

Can the photographer do no better than superimpose several realistic portrayals on any piece of film? Do quicker shutter speeds ensure greater photographic realism?

[E. von Hoegh]

"photographic realism" is one of those terms that, when it is applied to photographs, makes me want to kick puppies.

[jb7]

Of course Photo Realism exists-

However, the term 'photo realistic' caught my attention around the time when ray tracing made it possible to render computer generated models in a photographic way. Whenever I see the term, I assume I'm looking at something artificial...

[Dan Henderson]

To my admittedly simple mind, "photo realism" means that the photographer used all of his or her skills and abilities to make a photograph of a scene that resembles the scene as accurately as possible within the limitations of using a two dimensional process to represent a three dimensional scene.

So, my simple definition excludes black and white photography, photoshop or Velvia-enhanced colors, shallow depth of field, and probably a number of other tools that photographers use to alter the "reality" of a scene.

[Drew Wiley]

There are good illusionists and poor illusionists. That's all.

[Leigh]

Am I being too mischievous if I ask: at which “moment”?
Well, since you asked...

For any given imaging medium (I'll use digital for convenience of discourse, but the math is identical for film):

The value of each individual pixel equals the integral over the period Topen to Tclose of the intensity of the cone of light focused on that pixel. The difference in time from Topen to Tclose is the shutter speed.

Next question?

- Leigh

[Jay DeFehr]

To my admittedly simple mind, "photo realism" means that the photographer used all of his or her skills and abilities to make a photograph of a scene that resembles the scene as accurately as possible within the limitations of using a two dimensional process to represent a three dimensional scene.

So, my simple definition excludes black and white photography, photoshop or Velvia-enhanced colors, shallow depth of field, and probably a number of other tools that photographers use to alter the "reality" of a scene.

Dan,

There is a problem with your definition. Quotation marks, or not, your definition depends on an objective, measurable reality, against which to compare a photo. This is perhaps most simply illustrated by your limitations on spectral representation. The tonal values of a B&W image result from values in the scene, though they don't represent the full electromagnetic spectrum. Same goes for the Velvia. Your definition contradicts itself because it pretends an objective reality, but imposes a subjective, human visual perception system as arbiter of that reality. The same human visual perception system that sees sharply, and in color, in only a small, central part of the field of vision, with an extremely shallow depth of field, and relies on cognition to interpret rapidly scanned, visual input as meaningful imagery. For example, which photo is more "realistic", one of a waterfall made with a very short exposure, detailing every drop of spray distinctly, and clearly, or one made with a longer exposure, obscuring the details, but rendering the impression of movement?

[Leonard Evens]

"Photorealism" as a movement in photography certainly exists.

But what it might mean otherwise is problematic. The difficulty is that what we "see' with our eyes is something that is constructed within our brains. Our vision system is very different from how a camera works. It is true that the cornea and lens together act similar to a photographic lens in that they produce an image on the retina. But that is not what you see. Only the small section called the fovea accurately records the image, so you have to scan the scene to build up a complete image. Most of what we think of as vision takes place in the brain. And the process is complex. So photography never captures a scene as we see it, but it can produce a photographic image, which when viewed properly, approximates what we "see'. Indeed. most people when looking at a picture, even an ordinary snapshot, will recognize what they see. Again, this is explained by what happens in the brain, not by what is actually on the photograph.

[Heroique]

The difficulty is that what we “see” with our eyes is something that is constructed within our brains. Our vision system is very different from how a camera works.

To add punch to Leonard’s point, the two interesting views below from a related thread may contradict each other here & there, but they both suggest that “photographic realism” is, at best, an extremely problematic term:

The camera, AA says in The Camera, is “analogous” but not “identical” to the eye:


The camera, for example, does not concentrate on the center of its field of view as the eye does, but sees everything within its field with about equal clarity. The eye scans the subject to take it all in, while the camera (usually) records it whole and fixed. Then there is the film, which has a range of sensitivity that is only a fraction of the eye’s. Later steps, development, printing, etc., contribute their own specific characteristics to the final photographic image.

Art critic Robert Hughes (in The Shock of the New) has his own ideas about the eye:


Look at an object: your eye is never still. It flickers, involuntarily restless, from side to side. Nor is your head still in relation to the object; every movement brings a fractional shift in its position, which results in a miniscule difference of aspect. The more you move, the bigger the shifts and differences become. If asked to, the brain can isolate a given view, frozen in time; but its experience of the world outside the eye is more like a mosaic than a perspective set-up, a mosaic of multiple relationships, none of them (as far as vision is concerned) wholly fixed. Any sight is a sum of glimpses.

[jb7]

Whenever I see the term, I assume I'm looking at something artificial...

Artifice really exists. Nothing else is real.

Maybe I'm dealing with a different question.

[MDR]

Nope all photography is unrealistic.

Dominik

[Leonard Evens]

Let me give one further example of the surprising ability of the eye-brain combination to recognize what it is in a picture as a "realistic" view of the scene. In principle, there is exactly one position of your eye for which, when viewing a picture, the perspective is correct. Your eye should have the same relation to the picture that the lens did to the scene for vanishing points to be placed properly. This is true not only for photographs but for artists' renditions on canvas. But the typical viewer has no difficulty working out the three dimensional aspects of the scene from any point of view. Indeed, artists often depart significantly from pure perspective rules in order to make their pictures look more "realistic".

It may be an accident of evolution that we can recognize scenes from pictures of them, but without it, all two dimensional art, including photography, would be impossible.

[Jay DeFehr]

Let me give one further example of the surprising ability of the eye-brain combination to recognize what it is in a picture as a "realistic" view of the scene. In principle, there is exactly one position of your eye for which, when viewing a picture, the perspective is correct. Your eye should have the same relation to the picture that the lens did to the scene for vanishing points to be placed properly. This is true not only for photographs but for artists' renditions on canvas. But the typical viewer has no difficulty working out the three dimensional aspects of the scene from any point of view. Indeed, artists often depart significantly from pure perspective rules in order to make their pictures look more "realistic".

It may be an accident of evolution that we can recognize scenes from pictures of them, but without it, all two dimensional art, including photography, would be impossible.

leonard, If you haven't read The Age of Insight (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/the-age-of-insight/), I think you might enjoy it.

[Heroique]

In principle, there is exactly one position of your eye for which, when viewing a picture, the perspective is correct. Your eye should have the same relation to the picture that the lens did to the scene for vanishing points to be placed properly.

Doesn’t the absence of parallax in the print freeze or preserve the “correct” viewing position, no matter where the viewer is in relation to the print? So it’s correct everywhere.

I think Balzac wrote a short story about a painter who miraculously discovered how to preserve a three-dimensional scene’s parallax on his two-dimensional canvass!

That would be stunning realism indeed, being able to step to one side & see behind the subject.

[jb7]

Perspective is important, but so is scale-

http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/jeff_wall_the_giant/

[Drew Wiley]

Vectographic images were invented before holograms. DuPont made a vectographic film
which allowed a 3d view from shifting perspectives. Given enough layers, this could be done in color, but was quite a complicated process due to all the registration issues.

[Maris Rusis]

Please forgive some mildly abstract propositions. In cybernetic terms photography or the making of pictures out of light sensitive materials operates like a black box. A black box is an invariant process that accepts an input and delivers an output. We don't need to know what goes on in the black box but after watching many inputs and outputs we can make correct predictions.
The input in photography is a physical sample of something that used to be part of the subject matter. The output is an aggregation of marks on a surface forming a picture of the subject matter. Importantly there are no other inputs and all the processes in the black box are physical and chemical sequences that operate according to the laws of the universe and not the whim of man.

Given all that I reckon the most that can be said about photographic realism is:

Every point in a photograph can be put into a one to one correspondence with a place in the subject matter.
The ordering of points in a photograph, say abcd...., is the same as the ordering of points in the subject, say ABCD..... An order like acdb... never occurs.
There are no points in a photograph that do not match something in the subject.
The values of individual points in a photograph depend on which photographic black box you choose to use. The black box with colour negative film will give different point values to the one with black and white film but in every case the process is self-consistent and one to one correspondence is preserved.

Photographic realism, even simply defined, does not give licence to be foolish or naive about what really constitutes subject matter. The camera negative may be a photograph (for instance) of a landscape. The landscape is the subject. The positive, a paper-based gelatin-silver image for example, is a photograph of that negative. And in my darkroom the positive is often a photograph of a negative, a dodging wand, and a burning card. Negatives, wands, and cards are inputs or in other words subject matter. What some people find uncomfortable to concede is that the positive is not a photograph of the original scene. Only the camera-original negative qualifies for that honour.

The picture-making black box responsible for paintings, drawings, and digital pictures is different to the one that makes pictures out of light-sensitive materials. The key difference is the presence of an addition input: the whim of a human operator in capriciously or creatively re-ordering the connection between input and output. Once that happens basic principles like one to one correspondence disappear. Painting, drawing, and digital techniques may offer plausible pictures of possible worlds but they cannot claim genuine photographic realism.

[Mike Anderson]

A black box is an invariant process that accepts an input and delivers an output.

Doesn't that reduce the photographer to one that just points the camera?

[Brian C. Miller]

Doesn't that reduce the photographer to one that just points the camera?

You have finally discovered the truth of photography. Now go forth and do it with style!

[Heroique]

Maris for the beginner:

If you can capture it on film, it’s real.

If you can paint it, well, it might not be.

[Leonard Evens]

leonard, If you haven't read The Age of Insight (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/the-age-of-insight/), I think you might enjoy it.

I am in the process of reading it right now.

[Leonard Evens]

Doesn’t the absence of parallax in the print freeze or preserve the “correct” viewing position, no matter where the viewer is in relation to the print? So it’s correct everywhere.

I think Balzac wrote a short story about a painter who miraculously discovered how to preserve a three-dimensional scene’s parallax on his two-dimensional canvass!

That would be stunning realism indeed, being able to step to one side & see behind the subject.

Consider what happens when you use a very short focal length lens for the format, e.g., a 75 mm lens for 4 x 5. If you view an 8 x 10 print from a normal viewing distance, i.e., about 10-12 inches, circles on the edge will appear distorted. On the other hand, if you can get your eye close enough to the print so its distance from the print is appropriate for the format and focal length, i.e., 150 mm for a 75 mm lens with 4 x 5, the scene will look normal without any distortion.

Similar things happen when you use a long lens. For things to look "normal', you eye has to be at the appropriate point and further from the print than you would normally view it.

Of course, what I've been describing as a distortion may be what you want the print to look like when you use either short or long lenses for the format.

[Heroique]

...what I've been describing as a distortion...

I was responding to your remarks as if you were talking about “viewpoint perspective,” but I now realize you meant “geometric perspective,” and your expanded observations above certainly continue to underscore how elusive “photographic realism” can be.

[RichardSperry]

A few months ago I was out in an old Delta cemetary with a photo friend late at night with a full moon. We were doing some night shots, obviously. She wanted ghosts. I was fine with trees and tombstones.

And the local police officer stopped by to investigate us.

She was very cordial, and after we were questioned about our actions and motives and she was satisfied that we were no threat, the three of us talked about night photography a bit. She asked if we had ever tried light painting, and that the CSI team she works with would use that to document scenes at night. Long shutter speeds with an investigator painting the scene and evidence with a Maglight.

So not even photographic evidence collected and documented for court use is 'real', or needs to be; apparently.

[Brian C. Miller]

... She asked if we had ever tried light painting, and that the CSI team she works with would use that to document scenes at night. Long shutter speeds with an investigator painting the scene and evidence with a Maglight.

So not even photographic evidence collected and documented for court use is 'real', or needs to be; apparently.

Why is light painting not "real?" Just because the scene wasn't lit with a flash doesn't mean that it's inaccurate.

[RichardSperry]

Why is light painting not "real?" Just because the scene wasn't lit with a flash doesn't mean that it's inaccurate.

Because your eyes don't see the world like that. If the definition of what is 'real', is based on human eyesight.

Even if you walked up to the scene with a maglight, you could never see it like the photograph portrays it. Your eyes just don't work that way. The scene is never really like the photograph, mostly because a long exposure is an amalgam of many different things over a period of time that your eyes 'really' could never see themselves.

[RichardSperry]

Imagine the most realistic and true, and unmanipulated, black and white photo or print, are you color blind? Is it the same size? Do you really see the world like this print?

Imagine a scene with a white car in it. The car paint is the same color as any photo print paper you can ever buy. Now imagine the sun reflecting off the glass or some bit of chrome. It is physically impossible to render that scene as in real
life; until, I suppose, you invent a photo paper that radiates light.

After that, once you start entering in all the other obvious flaws of photography, like parallax, convergence, perspective distortion, lens distortion, etc. it is readily apparent that photography can never be realistic. It's realism is merely an optical illusion.

[Heroique]

She wanted ghosts.

Did you get one?

-----
I know it sounds strange, but if you take into account the brain, the maglight method sounds more analogous to human vision than a conventional photograph. Much like the “sum of glimpses” from the final line in post #25. The cubists, of course, explored this notion. Persuasively, I think.

[RichardSperry]

Did you get one?


I accidently left my first print in the hypoclear over night.

It produced a defect that sure looked like a real floating blob of spiritual ectoplasm in front of a monument. But, no, I don't believe in ghosts. Gave it to her to tell all her friends that it was REAL.

[David_Senesac]

Photo realism? Pretty much along the lines of what Dan Henderson related despite the subsequent ineffective arguments trying to reject that notion. Those rejecting realism habitually cast a large net from narrow arguments.

Simply put, photo realialism, is about capturing a two dimensional visual frame for a moment in time that people were they witnesses and polled would agree that the result is a REASONABLY accurate representation of the scene of that moment for the purposes intended. And that might be just the graphical gray scale representation if one just questioned the graphical fidelity or both the graphical and color fidelity if that was questioned. And it might not be about everything within a photographic frame but what is important for the purpose intended. That graphical realism is what photographs captured for photojournalism have always been about.

Small minded will start ridiculous arguments about how we humans see in 3D so a photograph cannot be accurate. Or that black and white in a color visual world is by nature false. Thus the notion is impossible so pursuit of such is misguided. And then they ramble on adding why all manner of manipulations ought instead be embraced. Thus if an image in all its elements is not perfectly accurate as say our eye's visually experience a scene then throw the baby out with the bath water.

If a reporter captures a picture of the emotional moment of a politician face at a public event, it matters not if the gray scale aspects of the captured image are only modestly accurate as long as that emotion is portrayed reasonably. The graphical content given the size of the resulting intended display ought to be reasonably accurate and without post processing manipulations else they would come under considerable criticism and public scrutiny. Out of focus consequential areas of such a frame in the background or foreground need not be in focus. Such graphical reasonable accuracy is even more important with images presented in courtrooms as evidence.

If a sports photographer captures the collision at home plate when a runner from third touches home plate a moment before the ball carrying glove touches the runner's leg, those graphical elements that capture that moment are what counts. A product photographer hired by a manufacturer of consumer detergent for an advertisement in a national magazine better have near perfect graphical and color fidelity of the product box in their ad photo while whatever else in the image matters not and can be grossly manipulated for whatever marketing purpose. And likewise if someone's intent capturing a closeup of a colorful bird species is to accurately capture both graphic and color elements, such can be reasonably captured just as sure as the product photographer shot the detergent box. Such may take some camera skills, some calibration software, the correct lighting etc, and pros do such every day. It doesn't matter that it is not perfectly accurate because that will always be impossible if one refines that definition small enough into levels of sensor pixels or hues perfect enough to pass a spectrophotometer. Because that is not the intents.

However if one had 100 people judge the result and 95 said it was very close, that for all intended purposes would be good enough. On the other hand, someone could manipulate the saturation of a bird's blue feathers to some gaudy level as is popular in this day and 95% of people might laugh without bothering to utter any description if someone asked if that result bore resemblence. In other words instantly obvious. And that is in fact what many produce today. It is what it is.


http://www.davidsenesac.com/david_philosophy1.html

[f90]

We are relatively close to 2d photographic realism, but just beause we are close does not mean that we are actually close.

Some of you may remember David Hockney's take on the subject..."Most people feel that the world looks like the photograph. I’ve always assumed that the photograph is nearly right, but that little bit by which it misses makes it miss by a mile. This is what I grope at."

Photo-realism has less to do with lens choice, or perspective than it is does with sharpness, tonal gradiation, shadows/highlights (critical importance of each depends on the scene) and contrast. There are a surprising amount of inconsistancies you can get away with if your scene conveys a realisitic appearance of light.. cue ansel adams.

Although a realistic photograph would be quite a thing to see, I can't imagine that it would be much fun for the photographer to create, since by definition it must lack subjectivity.

[RichardSperry]

I know it sounds strange, but if you take into account the brain, the maglight method ...

No. It doesn't sound strange.

It's kind of like drawing shapes at night with sparklers, the old illegal kind, as a kid on the Forth. Or a burning campfire stick in the dark.

I have been wanting to do an experiment. Photograph a nautilus shell, a bell pepper, and a cut cabbage on infrared. Lit only by a laser pointer. I wonder how that will turn out.

[RichardSperry]

David,

Ansel Adams was continually and small mindedly defending his extensive manipulations(photoshopping) of his negatives and prints. 98 out of a 100 would say that his prints are realistic. I could quote his books or the documentary videos of him doing so, but I'll assume you've read or saw these already. Watching or listening to him talk about the difference, you can hear the derision he held even for his own straight prints.

Honestly, for the better part of my life I've never really thought that photography was or could be art. Until I began to realize how much like paint, or ink, or chalk, or graphite a photograph can be. How fluid and malleable the medium is. Photography is much more expressive, more impressive, to me now. I now place photographers in the group of people that holds painters, sculptor, artists, and composers; instead of just documentarians or reporters(who merely are at the right place and right time with a box). When it was just a snapshot in time of a moment, it was relatively useless to me(for I already possess memory) and really boring to me relative to 'real' art. I regret not thinking this way about photography sooner in life, I regret thinking it was just like you write it is for all that time.

[Heroique]

...98 out of a 100 would say that AA’s prints are realistic...

Count me among the 98 – if it’s a matter of believing or feeling that his print could represent a normal person’s real, if unusual, experience.

[Heroique]

Some of you may remember David Hockney’s take on the subject: “Most people feel that the world looks like the photograph. I’ve always assumed that the photograph is nearly right, but that little bit by which it misses makes it miss by a mile. This is what I grope at.”

Below is “A Bigger Splash” by David Hockney (acrylic on canvas, 1967).

I’m curious if he thinks it looks like “the world” – or also misses by a mile.

Psychologically, does it look like “the world”?

When it comes to “realism,” maybe painting has photography beat on several accounts.

[Mike Anderson]

...
Psychologically, does it look like “the world”?
...

Hmmm, I look at that and my first impression is that there's something missing. The diving board should have residual motion. Doesn't look like the world as reconstructed by my memories of people jumping off diving boards.

[E. von Hoegh]

Hmmm, I look at that and my first impression is that there's something missing. The diving board should have residual motion. Doesn't look like the world as reconstructed by my memories of people jumping off diving boards.
+1 on something missing.
The splash is all wrong, too. It looks like a painting that was "composed" by projecting a slide onto a canvas, tracing it, then filling it in with paint.