page_title: Anamorphosis
section_title: Types of projection
hierarchical_section_title: Anamorphosis / Types of projection
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Anamorphose (Stuhl), aufgenommen im Museum 3. Dimension in DinkelsbühlEnglish: Anamorphosis of a chair, photographed in a museum in Dinkelsbühl
context_page_description: Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, use special devices or both to view a recognizable image. Some of the media it is used in are painting, photography, sculpture and installation, toys, and film special effects. The word "anamorphosis" is derived from the Greek prefix ana‑, meaning "back" or "again", and the word morphe, meaning "shape" or "form". An oblique anamorphism is the visualization of a mathematical operation called an affine transformation. The process of extreme anamorphosis has been used by artists to disguise caricatures, erotic and scatological scenes, and other furtive images from a casual viewer, while revealing an undistorted image to the knowledgeable spectator.
context_section_description: There are two main types of anamorphosis: perspective (oblique) and mirror (catoptric). More complex anamorphoses can be devised using distorted lenses, mirrors, or other optical transformations.
  Examples of perspectival anamorphosis date to the early Renaissance (fifteenth century). The first examples were largely related to religious themes.
  With mirror anamorphosis, a conical or cylindrical mirror is placed on the drawing or painting to transform a flat distorted image into an apparently undistorted picture. The deformed image is created by using the laws of the angles of the incidence of reflection. This reduces the length of the flat drawing's curves when the image is viewed in a curved mirror, so that the distortions resolve into a recognizable picture. Unlike perspective anamorphosis, catoptric images can be viewed from many angles. The technique was originally developed in China during the Ming Dynasty. The first European manual on mirror anamorphosis was published around 1630 by the mathematician Vaulezard.
  With Channel anamorphosis or tabula scalata two different images are on different sides of a corrugated carrier. A straight frontal view shows an unclear mix of the images, while each image can be viewed correctly from a certain angle.
caption: Example of mirror anamorphosis
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