If one stood really close to this Jaguar and looked all over it and the mind assembled the vision from that proximity, this is what one would see! It's just perspective and how we
have to see things. Of course, we move out eyes to acquire this much of a view. Still, I can get that close, and imagine the entire car just like this! I'm used to the concept adding slices to get even 3 D images. I am shown individual and sequential CT scan slices of the human body, and see entire structures in space, at a glance. So the car, in this view is not strange to me. Yes it's distorted! That doesn't stop a wild spree in the cathedral of my mind. So, for me, at least, lack, that it misses the grace we are used to, is besides the point!
Now what was in Rajan's mind might very well have been the mischief of owning a 14mm lens! We do not know. I did not think of that at all! This kind of use, if it happened, reminds me of the
"Philadelphia Mallet Rule". A professor once pondered on the stone age man's first discovery of the potential of a mallet. "From then on, everything within reach needed to be hit with it!"
Bringing my own imagination to Rajan's picture evoked my own personal experience. I instantly recovered visions of the speedway races, rallies, all the showrooms and collections I have seen, the cars I've driven and even the E-Type, smashed by a train as it was stuck on a railways crossing in in Harare, Zimbabwe. I look at the picture and have the joy of getting so close and personal to this admirable classic car. So I have had no problems with the use of the 14mm lens, whatever the validity of Rajan's intent, in the first place!
I admit, that in the context of the collection of all images from the visit to the location, I'm, now, not at all surprised that Ken was immediately influenced by
that context and so his conclusion was visceral and even logical.
That's why, in real estate, the words, "Location, location, location!" are in the ears if buyers, sellers and the agents. That's why curators carefully manage how they show collections.
The take-home lesson here is that it's our responsibility to show images in such a way that we allow the reaction we would like to be most possible.
Asher