I've always been intrigued by those Renaissance paintings depicting some crucial moment in the life of Christ: the wedding feast at Cana, the healing of the blind man, even the Last Supper. There is an intensity of energy at the center, but as our eyes move toward the periphery of the painting, the wondrous fades into the ordinary: people chatting, children playing, dogs sleeping.

In today's New York Times, the ever insightful Verlyn Klinkenborg, muses about two photographs of Abraham Lincoln. And then wonders:

What would the photographic record show if it reached back, say 500 years, instead of 180?

Oneanswer is that it would show us this same structure over and overagain: a fiercely concentrated knot of people hanging on the words ofsomeone at the center of the crowd. And around them? People standing inlooser and looser concentrations, until finally far enough from theepicenter their attention turns away from history and focuses on theabiding interest of almost anything else. And this is somehow theinherent bias of the camera. It always directs us toward the center ofattention, never away to the periphery, even though that is where ourattention eventually wanders.