The amount of light that passes through the lens and reaches the digital sensor is called exposure.
So, exposure determines how much light or darkness will get to the sensor, and thus how light or dark the image will be when you take a photo. There are settings that are responsible for this: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed - which together are called "the exposure triangle."
The first one can be seen either way. For me, I saw a vase first. In all of the pictures, the black drawing is considered the positive space and the white background behind it is considered to be the negative space. If you look at the vase picture again and imagine the background to be the black portion, you see two faces.
Hope this helps! :)
