Photography and painting.

[Torus34]

Years back, a rather fierce battle raged in some circles on whether photography was or was not an art. Comparisons between photographers and painters formed a part of the ammunition. Nothing was ever really resolved, as I remember, but it was fun to wade into the melee.

A post in this morning's 'Beginners' section about removing a stray wisp of hair from an informal portrait [Graybeard] brought the old conflict into sharp relief. The digital age and the ability to manipulate pictures in manners unimaginable in the film age has blurred the painter/photographer distinction and, perhaps, abolished it for good.

Consider a painter beginning a new work. Chances are he/she first establishes some sort of sketch on a surface. That done, the sketch is manipulated, using pigment, to flesh it out. This process -- painting in the sketch -- continues until the work is judged complete.

Today's savvy digitalista begins with a sketch, too. It's in the form of a digital photograph displayed on a screen. It, too, is fleshed out with electronic modifications of the image until it's judged complete.

Seen in broad perspective, there's little difference in what's being done by a painter sitting at an easel and a digital photographer sitting before a 'puter. Both are changing an image until it's closer to their heart's desire. At their best, both are trying to 'say' something with the image they work to create. Their tools are centuries apart, but they seek similar goals.

As to whether photographs can say something, I place in evidence Steichen's magnificent B&W photo exhibit, 'The Family of Man'.

 

[photoguy99]

The debate about whether or not photography is art still tags pointlessly on, in fact. It's been completely artificial, it carried on only by the clueless, for well over 100 years.

Interesting take on the photo-as-sketch.

 

[KenC]

The many photographs displayed in art museums attest to the fact that photography is generally accepted as art. As for digital manipulations, I think some don't appreciate that considerable manipulation was done in the film era, either in the darkroom or on prints. In some cases, prints were airbrushed to alter them - how's that for blurring the painting/photography line?

 

[photoguy99]

There was an era when photographers manipulated negatives and prints in deliberately painterly ways.

This is a fashion that comes and goes, in one form or another. With every change of fashion, some will say that photography has finally matured past the childish ways of whatever fashion it is that had just went out.

Which speaks itself to a sort of eternal childishness in photography.

 

[Designer]

We have "assemblage" and other forms of garbage art, performance art, and "found" art, that are not anything at all like the more "traditional" forms of art, but I think the reason some folks still argue against photography is because there is just so darn much of it that is not good at all, so the good stuff tends to be crowded out amid all the pushing and shoving, but there is good art in photography.

 

[photoguy99]

The usual argument against photography as art is that it's easy.

This generally betrays a notion of art that's a couple hundred years out of date. The debate has been over for 100+ years, but the foolish or media hungry will revive it from time to time.

It might be interesting to compare early 20th century pictorialism, all that hand manipulated bichromate stuff and co. with modern digital art.

The modern aesthetic seems to be more about cleaning, deleting, simplifying, clarifying. The old one was more about rendering things murky and harder to read. But still surely with the goal of clarifying the larger point.

 

[KmH]

Have you ever heard of a 'camera obscura'?

Some 17th century Dutch Master painters were known for producing paintings that had remarkable detail.
It has long been speculated that they used optical aids - like a camera obscura - to get all that detail. Hockney-Falco thesis
Johannes Vermeer is one of those Dutch Masters, and it's worth noting that one of his close friends (and the executor of Vermeer's estate) was the best lens maker on the planet at that time - Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.

 

[otherprof]

If it is titled, even "untitled," it is art. If it is on display in an art museum, it is art. That does not mean it has aesthetic merit or is worth more than a glance. We don't want to define "art" so there is only good art. The honorific, "art," is something some people confer on some things or activities, e.g., dance, sitting naked in the entrance to the MoMA. I remember once reading how African Art was invented at the Brooklyn Museum - now the Brooklyn Museum of Art. One of the curators wanted to mount an exhibition of African masks and other ceremonial objects, of which they had many, and would have been merely another show of its kind at a museum I loved as a kid for its shrunken heads and Polynesian war hammers. The controversy arose when the curator wanted to present it as an ART exhibit. At that time, no one considered those items more than anthropological specimens. The exhibit was presented as an exhibit of African art, and the concept of African art became obvious and noncontroversial. I believe that the carvers of those masks would have rejected the idea of their being artists. They thought they were doing something much more important: creating holy religious objects.
P.S. I once saw a wonder exhibit of quilts at a craft museum which was located across the street from MoMA, but no more, alas. There were quilts from all ages. My favorite was a contemporary quilt which covered a sphere about 10 feet in diameter. The artist had included a statement to the effect that the spherical quilt, being quite useless, was obviously a work of art.
P.S.S. Outside the Whitney in NYC I long ago saw a work by Walter De la Maria, which appeared to be a steel girder. It was accompanied by a statement by the artist to the effect that this girder was a work of art only when accompanied by this signed statement from the artist. At all other times it was merely a steel girder.

 

[astroNikon]

pointless argument.
It's all dependent upon how one defines and categorizes photography and painting and art
How would any side categorize some posters we have here, such as this one person who does post on TPF ==> Flickr: Modifeye's Photostream

His stuff is clearly not photography, oh wait, but it is
and it's clearly art work, but wait, it's photography.
I think some people spend more time doing this stuff than people who paint.

 

[Fred Berg]

I think it takes time for an activity to be accepted into the fold and to be considered a form of art. Painting was itself looked down upon for a long time in the history of the arts because it was considered to be too skills based, and only really got its feet under the table with the advent of the French Academy.

In terms of photography being considered an art I think the fact that it is technology assisted and dependent is against it. Slowly this view has shifted and some photography is certainly given a tip of the hat nowadays, particularly B&W, but general acceptance is still some way off, I feel.

Just speaking from a personal point of view I have had to suffer (with as much good grace as I could muster) the comment you must have a very good camera; knowing all to well that my endeavour and creativity was being completely ignored and overlooked.

 

[MichaelHenson]

Just speaking from a personal point of view I have had to suffer (with as much good grace as I could muster) the comment you must have a very good camera; knowing all to well that my endeavour and creativity was being completely ignored and overlooked.

I think this is the crux of the matter, personally. The masses discount the creativity and technical expertise required in photography. I think the prevalence of cameras in the world today has something to do with this but, just like we see so frequently here with many new members to TPF, the general public tends to think that the camera makes the photos not the creative, artistic expression demonstrated by the photographer. Not sure that this is ever going to change...

But, yes, it is art. Anything can be art...Art is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Derrel]

Interestingly, this week The Luminous Landscape's front page features an article by Frank Sauer, entitled I Wish I Knew How To Paint. I Wish I Knew How To Paint

 

[Derrel]

Have you ever heard of a 'camera obscura'?

Some 17th century Dutch Master painters were known for producing paintings that had remarkable detail.
It has long been speculated that they used optical aids - like a camera obscura - to get all that detail. Hockney-Falco thesis
Johannes Vermeer is one of those Dutch Masters, and it's worth noting that one of his close friends (and the executor of Vermeer's estate) was the best lens maker on the planet at that time - Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.

The BBC's documentary "David Hockney's Secret Knowledge", prominently featuring master painter David Hockney's research into how the renaissance painters secretly used camera obscura and lens setups to create amazingly detailed paintings is available free on YouTube. I have watched it myself, twice. As far as I am concerned, Hockney has proven beyond any doubt that using camera obscura and lens systems was the way painting suddenly became "amazingly realistic","and "lifelike", almost overnight.

Part one is here:

 

[astroNikon]

Interesting,
When I tried painting a long time ago, I actually took a photo of it first as I wasn't going to sit there forever trying to do something that took forever no matter how quickly Bob Ross did it.

 

[rexbobcat]

Photos were manipulated and retouched in the film days as well. Really it's all the same. It's just been made easier.

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