Landscape photography – Art or snapshot.
Last week I went to a photography talk from a gentleman who had been involved in photography since the 40's. He has taught in colleges and has some impressive work, most of which is landscapes or buildings. At various point in the evening he would hold up and image and the audience would murmur its approval of a great shot, at this point he would stop and say "I didn’t create the landscape, it was already there. I just happened to be in the right place to point the camera, press the shutter and capture it!"
He described in great detail some of the techniques he has used/developed for printing. Some of these techniques would take a week or more and involve all sorts of strange processes. This was a man who felt that the art in photography was not what you captured, although that was important, but the way in which you printed and presented the image.
At the end of the talk, he described a process that he had not been able to perfect even after 20 years of trying. He then held up a photograph that was perfectly finished and looked exactly like what he was trying to produce. I'm sure I could hear sadness when he described how he had created the effect in 5 minutes in his digital photo editor.
This is not to belittle landscape photographers. A master of the zone system who goes to the right location and waits for hours for the right lighting is creating art, but it is the art of the process.
Digital photography has all but removed the art from the 'non-creative' side of photography. It is now possible to buy a digital camera, take a decent photo and print it in a style that would have taken a master printer a week to produce. The best landscapes I now see are the ones that take more effort than driving in your car in the countryside, or going on holiday, but they are still not art. You can use a master’s technique to capture the landscape image, print the picture in an artistic way in a darkroom, but the image itself is not art.
On the other hand, there is art in photography, but it’s in the eye of the photographer. You have to create the image; it must gel in the mind and find its way into the camera. In this respect photography becomes more like a traditional art where the canvas fills from the photographers mind, not just what they happen to find in front of them. If the image starts outside the mind, then no matter how good the photograph it is simply great technique, if the image starts in the heart or mind, then it is art.
You might think then that photographing the nude should not be considered art. I would agree that there the vast majority of nude images are not art. However, when photographing nudes the model and the photographer can get into a kind of choreographed dance where each responds sympathetically to the feedback of the other. The technique of photography is still present but it becomes secondary to the dance. This is the point where the images go from being good photographs to being art.
Photographic art is finding a way to use technique to capture an inner vision. Of course art is subjective, I think the image for this post it art and fashion. You may disagree!
He described in great detail some of the techniques he has used/developed for printing. Some of these techniques would take a week or more and involve all sorts of strange processes. This was a man who felt that the art in photography was not what you captured, although that was important, but the way in which you printed and presented the image.
At the end of the talk, he described a process that he had not been able to perfect even after 20 years of trying. He then held up a photograph that was perfectly finished and looked exactly like what he was trying to produce. I'm sure I could hear sadness when he described how he had created the effect in 5 minutes in his digital photo editor.
This is not to belittle landscape photographers. A master of the zone system who goes to the right location and waits for hours for the right lighting is creating art, but it is the art of the process.
Digital photography has all but removed the art from the 'non-creative' side of photography. It is now possible to buy a digital camera, take a decent photo and print it in a style that would have taken a master printer a week to produce. The best landscapes I now see are the ones that take more effort than driving in your car in the countryside, or going on holiday, but they are still not art. You can use a master’s technique to capture the landscape image, print the picture in an artistic way in a darkroom, but the image itself is not art.
On the other hand, there is art in photography, but it’s in the eye of the photographer. You have to create the image; it must gel in the mind and find its way into the camera. In this respect photography becomes more like a traditional art where the canvas fills from the photographers mind, not just what they happen to find in front of them. If the image starts outside the mind, then no matter how good the photograph it is simply great technique, if the image starts in the heart or mind, then it is art.
You might think then that photographing the nude should not be considered art. I would agree that there the vast majority of nude images are not art. However, when photographing nudes the model and the photographer can get into a kind of choreographed dance where each responds sympathetically to the feedback of the other. The technique of photography is still present but it becomes secondary to the dance. This is the point where the images go from being good photographs to being art.
Photographic art is finding a way to use technique to capture an inner vision. Of course art is subjective, I think the image for this post it art and fashion. You may disagree!
posted by Richard at 10:17 AM
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