Joel and Blaiks

We largely comprehend this world through pictures, whether we’re taking selfies or photographing a very distant celestial body with a satellite that’s rushing past it with a speed of 16.26 km/s (10.10 mi/s) . Every photograph is an attempt to make sense of the world, even if only a few are acknowledged as that — those that we all could easily agree as being documents more than anything. Regardless of whether a photograph is viewed as a document or not, in all likelihood it is the result of some form of extrapolation, of some form or processing. Astronomical images are heavily processed, with the colours seen in them  A smartphone operates in similar ways.  None, of this, I would argue, matters much — after all, our own brains themselves are known to very selectively stitch together  But there is much to be gained from attempting to understand how the process of discerning facts or meanings from pictures — an act of interpretation — plays out. Two recent books use this i