In 1973 when living in Darlington, England, I found a copy of Andre Breton’s book, Nadja (1928), lying in the street.
It’s the story of a man and his chance encounter with Nadja, a young girl who lives between dream and reality. The man follows Nadja through Paris, evoking her perception of the world through chance encounters with words, images, objects and people.
The random offering of a painting, left at our front gate yesterday morning, reminded me of Nadja, and I wondered who was the artist, and how did they see this picture?
I see red blood washed up between a blue sea and yellow sand.
“It’s dinoflaggelates washed up on a beach”, says a house mate (a scientist).
I Google “dinoflaggelates”, and find a connection to visual contrast:
Hudnell, H. K. FISH-KILLING DINOFLAGGELATE TOXINS MAY REDUCE HUMAN VISUAL CONTRAST SENSITIVITY. Presented at 7th Intl Symp on Neurobehavioral Methods and Effects, Stockholm, Sweden, June 20-23, 1999.
We all perceive a landscape differently according to our training and experience.
Simpson Housley wrote, in 1992, ‘perception is a learned process, and not simply a response to a stimulus.’
Way of knowing the landscapes we occupy, and the lenses we use to to perceive them, are many-layered, and coloured by what we have learned.