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UNTIL THE MIDDLE of the 19th century, footwear wasn’t made differently for left
and right feet. You just bought a pair of shoes, boots, clogs or whatever, and slipped
them onto whichever foot you felt like.
The principle of handedness – chirality, as it’s known – applies to many areas
of our lives. Gloves, obviously, have chirality, but there are many more unexpected
places where handedness turns up: in screws, scissors, pencil sharpeners, book
spines, and so on. It’s not a life-or-death issue, although there are times when it is
a life-or-death issue: in operating theaters, for instance, the oxygen and nitrogen
gas canisters are threaded in opposite directions, so it’s impossible to screw a tube
onto the wrong canister. Sometimes handedness is used for mechanical gain: for
instance, in a turnbuckle, seen on the left (used to tighten pairs of ropes or cables),
two screws are threaded in opposite directions, so when the turnbuckle is tightened
the screws are pulled closer together.
As photomontage artists, we’re used to being able to manipulate objects so
that they fit the scene. We can flip them vertically and horizontally, if we wish, so
that they slot more neatly into our montages. But while most objects are agnostic
when it comes to handedness, it’s all too easy to make mistakes: a car with the
steering wheel on the wrong side, a clock with the numbers backwards, a computer
keyboard with the numerical keypad on the left rather than the right. You may not
notice these errors while you’re compiling the montage, but you can be sure your
readers will when it’s made public.
Ironically, one of the most common mistakes – flipping someone’s head
when they have a distinctive asymmetry – is unlikely to be noticed by the subject
themselves, as that’s the way they’re used to seeing their face in the mirror. But
other people will. They may not be able to pin down exactly what’s wrong, but
the flash of recognition you get when you see a familiar face won’t be there. Few
people are completely symmetrical, and we tend to notice when something is out
of the ordinary.
I N T E R L U D E
The left and right of things
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Flipping errors can appear in the unlikeliest
of places. Take a look at this simple montage,
showing John F Kennedy making a phone
call. There are at least ten mistakes here to
do with handedness. How many of them
can you spot?
His wristwatch should be on his left
hand. His shirt pocket should be on his
left, and the shirt buttons are done up
the way women’s clothes are made, not
men’s. The flag pin badge is facing the
wrong way. The bible in his hand has the
crucifix on the back, not the front. The
belt is buckled up back to front. The coin
pocket on the pants, which should be on
the right, is on his left side. The telephone
dial is back to front, as is the K insignia in the
middle of the table support.
Worst of all, Kennedy’s hair is parted
on the wrong side. And take another look
at the face: does it look right? Or is there
something intangibly uncomfortable about the
arrangement of features?
I’m not saying that you should never flip
a layer to make it fit, just that it’s important
to be aware of what can be flipped, and
what can’t. Take a moment to check, to
avoid being exposed later.
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