This presentation takes the form of a historical collage in order to illustrate some important and, I think, far-reaching observations about the representation and theorisation of space. As a city, Aberdeen has made its own unique but largely unacknowledged contributions to this subject. For this reason I will limit my principal reference points to several figures with close biographical connections to the city with the intention of exemplifying the scope and relevance of my research even within a restricted geographical context.

My account begins with the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid who was strongly opposed to the Idealism of his more famous contemporary, David Hume. This is followed by an outline of the physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s contribution to the invention of colour photography which segues into a discussion of the work of Aberdeen born philosopher Dominic McIver Lopes, who in a paper from 2003, claims: “When we look at photographs we literally see the objects that they are of.” If this is true, then when someone looks at a photograph of their grandmother, they literally see their grandmother. With the help of the work of Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Aberdeen University, Jan Deregowski, I aim to show that Lopes’ theory, and the philosophical Idealism that underlies it, is founded on various misconceptions about resemblances and the nature of illusion. The implications of this research both for theories of representation and for educational practice will then be sketched out.