Anamorphosis and anamorphic art

Elongated "school"An image that appears distorted, because it is constructed on an elongated grid, rendering it unintelligible until it is viewed from a specific, extremely oblique point of view or reflected in a curved mirror, or with some other optical device. "Anamorphosis" is a Greek word meaning transformation, or more literally "formed again." Road signs such as "SCHOOL CROSSWALK" and directional arrows are designed anamorphically ? stretched out ? when painted on pavement, so that these signs are easily understood by the drivers who must view them obliquely. Do not confuse anamorphosis with metamorphosis.Examples: Hans Holbein (German, 1497/8-1543), The Ambassadors, oil. A human skull in the lower third of the painting can be seen.In photography, an anamorphic lens is capable of compressing a wide angle of view onto a standard frame of film. A similar projection system can be used to reform such an image onto a wide screen. Holywood movie company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer devised an anamorphic lens system in 1957 for 35mm film with a compression ratio of 1.25:1, that is sometimes called "M-G-M Camera 65" and sometimes "Ultra Panavision." The system employed a pair of achromatized Brewster prisms in order to expand a projected image anamorphically, and was first used for the films Raintree County and Ben-Hur.