[h2][a href="vny!://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=609" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to The Human Camera"]The Human Camera[/a] [/h2][div class="entry"][div style="text-align: left;"] [/div][p style="text-align: left;"][img alt="wiltshire2.jpg" title="wiltshire2.jpg" id="image610" src="vny!://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/wiltshire2.jpg"][/p] [a href="vny!://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/wiltshire.cfm"]Stephen Wiltshire[/a] has been called the "Human Camera." In this short excerpt from the film [a href="vny!://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/wiltshire.cfm"][em]Beautiful Minds: A Voyage into the Brain[/em][/a], Wiltshire takes a helicopter journey over Rome and then draws a panoramic view of what he saw, entirely from memory. Incredibly, however, Wiltshire does not have a photographic memory (according to this [a href="vny!://www.slate.com/id/2140685/"]article[/a], no one does).
[/p]While his drawings possess uncanny accuracy — he gets the number of arches in the Colliseum exactly right — they are not like a Xerox. As Oliver Sacks writes in his book [a href="vny!://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=proceedinofth-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=vny!%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0679756973%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1146406733%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks"][em]An Anthropologist On Mars[/em][/a][img style="margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px;" src="vny!://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=proceedinofth-20&l=ur2&o=1" border="0" height="1" width="1"], "His pictures in no sense resembled copies or photographs, something mechanical and impersonal — there were always additions, subtractions, revisions, and of course, Stephen's unmistakable style. ... Stephen's drawings were individual constructions, but could they been seen, in a deeper sense, as creations?" [/p] [/div]
It's astonishing how little we know about the human brain. It seems that the more that is learned, the more it raises questions that need to be looked into. How many misconceptions have been taken for granted because no one knew what they were looking for? Particularly with the brain, all theories should be guidelines, not established fact. Some psychiatrists take the word of Freud or Jung as gospel, without questioning whether their patients will fit into the mold. I think that does incalculable harm to the patients. This man's painting should be considered art such as the great scenic artists of the past have done, but on a much larger scale.