03.11
PAREIDOLIA.
Noun.
“The imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist, as in considering the moon to have human features.”
My birth place, Mealor’s Cottages – Parkgate, Wirral, Cheshire England – I was born in the bedroom at the far end, upstairs.
So, seeing faces and animal shapes in cloud formations is an example of Pareidolia. The phenomenon has a particular interest to me, as I have found an enhancement in my Pareidolia of late. This is due to severe optic nerve damage I suffered between 2008 & 2009. Because I get only 10% of the optic signal to each eye, I seem to see many more odd things (viz. faces), in random patterns. Much more than I used to, with normal vision.
Hopefully you can see a face in the foliage at the back of these cottages. This is where I was born (in 1952) at the far-end conjoined cottage – at the shrimp-fishing village of Parkgate, Wirral, England. I took this pic in 1991, on my first visit back to England since I was 10 years old.
Have only recently been filing through old photos, and noticed the face. The obvious face is of a man’s head looking slightly to our left. It is reminiscent of “Jack-In-The-Green, the sprite-like personage who is associated with the English May period (Spring).
However, as someone pointed out, there is also another head just below it – of a man with a large bushy beard of flowers. His head comes out of the wall, as though fixed to it. He faces to our left, and is in profile. Not unlike Pan, the God of Nature – and also analogous to Jack.
Two Faces of Foliage and Flowers.
I got carried away by all this, and printed out a photo of the enlarged section (at left), and did a bit of marker pen surgery on it (see below). if nothing else, it helps some people “see” where the two faces are on the original cottage shot. I want to do a feature on here, on the topic of Pareidolia, and post many more opf my examples. A large part of the photo-art at my “Fragments of Vision” exhibition at Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery (BRAG), utilised this topic.
The Two faces – revealed by marker pen on photographic paper.