Such techniques, many already present in Ivans Childhood but exploited more fully in his later work, include: the slow protracted shots over the earth, water and material objects ; the unhurried dilation of time infusing everything the camera sees with spiritual life ; an abandonment of perspective and the promotion of a flat image , hence the surface of the image becoming more prominent and the flattening of figures and their surroundings onto a single plane ; the changed function of high and low-angle shots which cease to be psychological or expressionistic becoming in Ivans Childhood a means of subsuming the human figure in a near-geometrical construct.
