Between the flu and Thanksgiving and some hockey travel I haven't been at my computer much. However, with my iPhone at my side, I have managed to make some pictures.
During my flu recovery time, I did visit some websites / blogs where, on TOP, I read Mike Johnston's entry wherein he stated his preference for viewing photographs ...
... For me—just for me, I'm not telling you what to think or do—the power of photographs comes from their connection to the real world. That's where their magic resides, and what gives them their power.
To which some nit wit (iMo), responeded ...
The point I am trying to make is that the more we try to connect photography to the "real world", the less magic and power it has. In that context, a photograph can never be more than a poor record of something magical and powerful.
The aforementioned nit wit tried to make his point by inferring that a ... painting has a painter, a person with an idea. He paints with a purpose; his painting embodies his idea .... A painter is an auteur. Whereas, a photographer ..."only" captured an instant in the real world. He did not make that instant. If a photograph is about the real world, then the photographer cannot be the auteur. Without an autuer, a work has no embodied idea, no permanent, broader meaning.
That specious reasoning is pure rubbish inasmuch as most "serious" picture makers, especially the "greats", make pictures with a purpose and an idea. Pictures with an embodied idea and broader meaning(s). Pictures which resonate with ideas and meaning, not because of picture making manipulation (pre, during or post), but as a result of those picture makers' heightened ability to see ... to see "an instant in the real world" which conveys their purpose / ideas(s) / meaning(s).
Just because the aforementioned nit wit is unable to fathom / intuit / understand a "straight" picture maker's purpose / idea / meaning does not mean that such qualities do not exist in those pictures that he does not "get". It just means that the nit wit has no intuitive or creative imagination or visual literacy.
Did I mention the guy is a nit wit?