According to the show I saw on channel 13 - humans began producing images about 30,000 years ago when shamans went into drug induced trances and traced what they were seeing on cave walls. The literature about these early images goes into the neurology of the optic system - showing that while the content of the image had to do with symbols that were important to the particular clan, i.e. mastodons, bison etc. but that the patterns that the shaman saw - were actually based on how our optics work. The pattern of spots on the bison 30,000 years ago, are similar to cave painting that were made 200 years ago by entranced shamans in South Africa; or by test subjects in a lab that were put into trances by flashing patterns of light on their closed eyes.
In other words - 30,000 years before Rimbaud and the Beatles - they were doing the same "disordering of the senses" thing in order to try and enter into the spirit world. Somewhere along the line - organized religion took over and there was a split between the shamans and the modern corporate model of religion.
This rift, between the imagined and the so-called "real" continues to move through the history of art. And continues into the digital photography age.
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Another interesting spin-off of this is the early split in the Christian Church between the gnostics and what was to become the organized church.
The gnostics - like shaman - often wandered far away from the center of the village - to sacred places where they were able to have personal visions of what I'll call the infinite.
The early church elders saw that you couldn't have a religious organization based on these personal visions which often differed. Civilized man wants easy to follow paint-by-the numbers steps. If you do this, this and that - you will be succesful in this life and the life beyond.
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