Before the invention of photography, artists had a whole bag of tricks to make objects and materials look realistic. With the invention of photography in the 19th century that whole bag became obsolete because there was a easier way to achieve realism. So realism wasn't any longer a goal for artists. 

It's no surprise that around the same time when the first photo's appeared, impressionisme as a painting style occured, which was a predecessor for all the modern styles like cubism, abstract and so on. Artists had to find other goals to impress people (and their customers.) Still there were painters who tried to achieve realism, but that became a style on it's own, together with it's branches like magic realism and surrealism (salvador dali).

The urge for (photo) realism in CGI isn't probably caused by artistic reasons, but commercial ones: advertising and to cut the costs of special effects. In advertising you can show a product before it's made or built. And the results in movies today are astonishing. (when was the last time disney made a hand-drawn movie?)

But to stay on topic, the question was: is my goal photorealism in poser? My answer is no, I want to tell a story with my pictures and it does't have to look absolutely perfect as long the story is clear. But I will always try to make it as realistic as possible.

 

best regards,

Bopper.

-How can you improve things when you don't make mistakes?