Photorealism

Photorealism is a style of painting and sculpture that reproduces photographic detail with high precision, often using photographs as source material.

Grid method: A drawing technique that divides a reference image and surface into matching squares for accurate transfer. Grids helped artists enlarge photographs while preserving proportions and placement.
1960s art: Art made during the 1960s, a decade marked by new movements and challenges to established artistic conventions. Photorealism arose within this period's turn toward images drawn from everyday life and mass media.
Chuck Close: An American painter known for large-scale portraits constructed from closely observed photographic images. His portraits show how photographic structure can coexist with visibly built-up painterly surfaces.
Telephone Booths: A 1967–68 painting by Richard Estes depicting a row of New York telephone booths through layered reflections. Its reflections show Estes using photographic complexity without simplifying urban glass and metal.
Airbrush: A tool that sprays paint in a controlled stream of fine droplets. Its smooth gradients can reproduce the even tonal transitions of photographs.
Pop art: An art movement that incorporated imagery and techniques from popular and commercial culture. Its use of mass-produced imagery helped prepare the ground for artists who painted from photographs.
Audrey Flack: An American painter and sculptor associated with Photorealism and brightly colored still-life compositions. Her still lifes use photographic precision to examine objects, memory, and mortality.
Big Self-Portrait: A 1967–68 painting by Chuck Close depicting the artist's face at monumental scale from a photograph. It demonstrates how photographic detail can be enlarged into an imposing painted image.
Camera obscura: An optical device that projects an external scene through a small opening or lens onto a surface. It is an earlier aid for translating observed scenes into precise images.
Abstract Expressionism: A postwar art movement emphasizing gestural abstraction, large-scale compositions, and subjective expression. Photorealism countered its dominant emphasis on visible gesture and abstraction.

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