(embiggenable) ~ iPhone
(embiggenable) ~ iPhone
(embiggenable) ~ iPhone
I HAVE LONG THOUGHT AND BELIEVED THAT ONE of the medium of photography and its apparatus' "problem":, re: acceptance and appreciation as an art form, is also its raison d'etre or its unique characteristic as a visual art. That is, its inherent / intrinsic relationship with/to the real.
From its very inception, the medium has had to deal with the perception that pictures made with a machine were the result of little more than a machanistic-i.e., determined by physical processes alone-activiity which was devoid of any evidence of the "hand of the artist". Therefore, according to a number of national art academies (European) at the time, photography was most certainly not an art. A "craft" perhaps, but most emphatically not an art.
The response from many photo practioners of the era-primarily, 1885 to 1915-to that academic prejudice was the practice of Pictorialism. An approach to the medium which emphasised "the beauty of subject matter and the perfection of composition...", not to mention the physical manipulation of the negative and print, "...rather than the documentation of the world as it is .... [an attempt] to infuse a certain otherworldly feel into the previously non-romantic and starkly objective medium of photography."
Eventually-around the very early 20th century-some photographs began to exhibit photographs which sought to picture the world as it is without "artistic" contrivance. That movement came to prominence in the form of a 1932 exhibition which presented the work of 11 photographers who announced themselves as the F.64 group. A group which "embodied a Modernism aesthetic for straight photography, based on precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects."
I could continue on the path of writing about the current movement(s)-such neo-pictorialism-in the medium of photography and its apparatus but that's not my objective in this entry. So...back on point, re: the problem with the medium's its inherent / intrinsic relationship with/to the real.
Consider the 3 pictures in this entry. Independent of their artistic merit-whatever that might be-imagine them as paintings-watercolor, oils, et al. Now imagine the photographs on a gallery wall, side-by-side with the paintings of the exact same referent. In fact, paintings made using the photographs as a referential basis for the paintings.
In this imagined scenario, a viewer can choose one version-painting or photograph-of the scene for free. iMo, most viewers would choose the painting based in large part because it looked more like "art" than the photograph. You know the logic... the photograph is "just a picture" / "I could have made that picture", etc. Although, it could be more of a horse race if the photographer had added a lot more art sauce-effect filters, exaggerated sauration / contrast, et al-to the photograph to make it more "art-like", aka: a return to Pictorialism practices.
In my next entry, I venture a ways down the rabbit of perceptual / cultural reasons for why I believe this imagined experiment is true. Aslo, does it matter? / Who cares? And, remember, your thoughts and comments are alway welcomed.