The Perspective Research Centre is dedicated to the study of visual, optical, and technical perspective across art, science, and technology.
Perspective is often understood as a drawing method, but it is far more than that. It shapes how we see, represent, measure, model, image, and understand spatial reality. It appears in art, architecture, geometry, optics, photography, cinema, cartography, scientific imaging, computer graphics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, robotics, and many other fields.
Our aim is to make this vast subject easier to explore. The PRC brings together books, papers, images, films, diagrams, bibliographies, archives, definitions, classifications, and research notes relating to the many forms of perspective. Our work has already identified approximately 1,200 distinct forms of visual, optical, and technical perspective.
Because perspective is a large and evolving field, some of the classifications and definitions presented here are provisional. In some cases, we refine or extend existing terminology in order to develop a more complete and coherent framework. As research continues, this framework will be reviewed, corrected, expanded, and improved.
Whether you are a researcher, teacher, artist, scientist, technologist, designer, historian, student, or curious reader, this site offers a gateway into one of the most important and fascinating subjects in visual knowledge.
What is Perspective?
Perspective concerns the relationship between space, vision, representation, and measurement.
It includes the natural conditions of seeing, the optical behaviour of light and instruments, and the artificial systems used to represent space in images, diagrams, drawings, photographs, films, screens, simulations, and digital environments.
A familiar example is linear perspective, the Renaissance method for representing three-dimensional space on a flat surface. But linear perspective is only one part of a much larger field. Perspective also includes curvilinear, spherical, cylindrical, anamorphic, aerial, reverse, parallel, simulated, instrumental, retinal, photographic, cinematic, computational, and many other forms.
The PRC studies these forms not as isolated curiosities, but as parts of a larger structure of visual and spatial understanding.
Our Mission
The mission of the Perspective Research Centre is to collect, organise, classify, and develop knowledge about perspective across all relevant disciplines.
We seek to bring together historical and modern theories, methods, instruments, applications, and visual systems from both Western and non-Western traditions. Our long-term aim is to support the emergence of perspective science: a unified field concerned with the ways spatial reality is seen, represented, transformed, measured, and understood.
To support this aim, we are developing Perspective Category Theory, a classification framework designed to organise the many types, forms, systems, and applications of perspective into a coherent structure.
Library, Bibliography, and Archives
The Library of Perspective includes approximately 5,000 physical volumes, thousands of digital papers and books, hundreds of articles, theses and treatises, and a large image archive. The site also provides access to a major Bibliography of Perspective, developed from the work of Luigi Vagnetti and Kim Veltman, containing around 15,000 titles on perspective and related fields.
The PRC also preserves and develops the intellectual legacy of Professor Kim Veltman, whose archive includes unpublished articles, letters, books, treatises, and manuscripts relating to perspective, visual knowledge, Leonardo da Vinci, media theory, and the history of science.
The Art and Science of Perspective
The PRC is developing a multi-volume book series entitled The Art and Science of Perspective.
The first volume, The Past, Present and Future of Visual and Optical Perspective, introduces the wider subject and explains why perspective should be understood as a major field linking art, science, technology, and visual culture.
The second volume, Dictionary of Perspective, is a large specialist reference work containing more than 4,000 terms, approximately 1,200 types and forms of perspective, and extensive material on the theory and practice of perspective across many disciplines.
Together, these works aim to clarify, consolidate, and expand knowledge of one of the most important but under-recognised subjects in visual culture.
Perspective Today
Perspective is not an obsolete historical topic. It remains central to modern visual technologies.
Its principles are active in photography, cinema, computer graphics, scientific imaging, virtual and augmented reality, robotics, medical visualisation, autonomous navigation, photogrammetry, cartography, astronomy, microscopy, game design, artificial intelligence, and many other fields.
As images, simulations, spatial data, and immersive environments become more important, the study of perspective becomes more relevant, not less.
Explore the Site
Use this site to explore:
- the history of perspective
- major categories and types of perspective
- perspective instruments and visual technologies
- the Library and Bibliography of Perspective
- the Dictionary of Perspective
- Kim Veltman’s archive and related research
- images, diagrams, films, study guides, and educational resources
The Perspective Research Centre is an ongoing project. We welcome corrections, suggestions, and collaboration from readers, researchers, teachers, artists, technologists, and institutions interested in the future of perspective studies.