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.
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.
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.
The Art and Science of Perspective
The Art and Science of Perspective is a major multi-volume series examining visual and optical perspective across art, science, technology, vision and spatial representation.
The first two volumes provide both a wide-ranging introduction to the field and a comprehensive specialist reference. Together, they establish the foundations for a new, interdisciplinary understanding of perspective.
Volume 1
NEW: The Past, Present and Future of Visual and Optical Perspective — Second Edition
A new understanding of what perspective is, how it operates and why it matters across the visual arts, sciences and technologies.
This wide-ranging volume traces, re-examines and extends the field of perspective from antiquity to the digital age. It explores natural and artificial perspective across art, optics, geometry, architecture, photography, cinema, computer graphics, virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
Through Perspective Category Theory, the book moves beyond traditional linear perspective to reveal the wider connections between vision, spatial reality, image-making, representation, art and science.
Written for artists, architects, photographers, filmmakers, designers, engineers, researchers, students and digital creators, this major interdisciplinary study illuminates the historical development, present applications and future possibilities of visual and optical perspective.
Price: US$27.99
Large-format 8.5 × 11-inch paperback
270 pages, printed on white paper
Volume 2
NEW: Dictionary of Perspective — Second Edition
The first comprehensive dictionary and taxonomy devoted specifically to visual and optical perspective.
Containing more than 4,000 terms, approximately 1,200 types and forms of perspective, and more than 350,000 words, the Dictionary brings together terminology, theories, methods, instruments, classifications, visual phenomena and applications from across art, science and technology.
More than a conventional dictionary, it also functions as a concise encyclopaedia, taxonomy and theoretical map of the field.
Price: US$34.99
Large-format 8.5 × 11-inch paperback
590 pages, printed on white paper
A one-of-a-kind reference for artists, architects, designers, photographers, filmmakers, educators, researchers, students, CGI specialists and visual thinkers.
More than five years in development, the Dictionary records established, uncommon, historical, conflicting, new and refined terminology while organising the wider field through Perspective Category Theory. It also identifies errors, clarifies disputed meanings and introduces new concepts, classifications and distinctions developed through more than thirty years of research.
What Makes the Dictionary Distinctive
- More than 4,000 terms and approximately 1,200 perspective types and forms
- More than 350,000 words across 590 large-format pages
- The first comprehensive dictionary and taxonomy of visual and optical perspective
- A specialist dictionary, concise encyclopaedia and theoretical map
- Extensive interdisciplinary coverage and cross-referencing
- More than 200 concepts, classifications and distinctions originated, named, refined or formalised by Alan Stuart Radley
- Coverage extending from historical art and geometry to photography, cinema, CGI, VR, AR and artificial-intelligence imaging
- Analysis of errors, inconsistencies and previously unexplained perspective phenomena
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
Start Here
Choose the best starting point:
- New to perspective? Start with Introduction to Perspective
- Interested in the theory? Read Perspective Category Theory
- Need a specialist reference? See Dictionary of Perspective
- Looking for a lecture? See Talks / Courses
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.
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