- Joined
- May 1, 2008
- Messages
- 25,422
- Reaction score
- 5,003
- Location
- UK - England
- Website
- www.deviantart.com
- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos OK to edit
Rules
It turns out artists (and by extension photographers in particular) don't like rules.
Maybe its the world "RULES" that invokes some kind of mental image of evil school-teachers and repeated "No Ball Games" signs that just begged to be torn down and ignored. Whatever it is it seems that as soon as art and rules come together fights break out. People lash out - almost in a mindless state of wanting to make sure that their art; their photography; their hobby is without these imposing rules.
Somehow I think its a desire to ascribe the romantic notion of freedom to photography and art in general. To feel that there is something "natural" in the creative world that defies control; logic; rules; books; learning - that is instinctive and thus comes from the person alone. That they are born with it - that they are greater for it; that they can stand up upon a pedestal higher than the rest of us (artistically speaking of course).
Well whatever the reason it leads to fights. Personally I think its because we misunderstand the term in itself- and we couple that to the fact that most of us, honestly - well we never went to art school and we didn't learn it and we don't really understand it.
So here's a thought. Art in relation to photography is about speaking to people.
You are speaking to people in visual terms; in a language which has no verbal component, nor motion and often no written component either (though not always of course - sometimes the words written within a photo are key).
Indeed we accept this very readily - we openly say "A photo paints a 1000 words" and other such similar statements.
So we do indeed accept that photography is, in part, a language form. Now if we build from there we already know that the language we speak; that we learned more by instinct from youth (at least for our mother tongue(s) is a language with structure. It has rules, conventions and concepts within it that allow us to speak to each other and be understood.
Now we've accepted that languages have a structure to them. Rules that underpin how we communicate with them that allows one person to speak to the other. We also know that these structures have localizations and further that the formal structure is not always what we use. In fact most of us bumble along very understandably in a more casual manner. It's not "better" nor "worse" overall; its just different.
Thus I would liken photography and art to language.
We can learn both through the osmosis of growing up and we can learn both formally. We can "break" or "twist" the rules that we are given; but we also cannot just "break" things without learning them first. We have to learn how those rules work; why they work; what contexts they requires to work - then we can work on breaking them.
Art, like language, is built to work like that. Because often from the foundation of twisting things we get new theories; new ways of structuring the language which give rules to new "rules" which can establish themselves in time within the population.
Art is very much the same.
So what are the rules - the rules are in books. They are in great works of the past and present; they are in the studies of visual communication. They are not something to be feared; to be discounted nor to be twisted to nothing. They are a structure and if we can but learn that structure; or at least a part of it, then it can only take our artistic communication further - take our creativity further (because as we understand how to speak visually better thus we are vastly more free to speak on more subjects; on more themes and with more clarity).
It turns out artists (and by extension photographers in particular) don't like rules.
Maybe its the world "RULES" that invokes some kind of mental image of evil school-teachers and repeated "No Ball Games" signs that just begged to be torn down and ignored. Whatever it is it seems that as soon as art and rules come together fights break out. People lash out - almost in a mindless state of wanting to make sure that their art; their photography; their hobby is without these imposing rules.
Somehow I think its a desire to ascribe the romantic notion of freedom to photography and art in general. To feel that there is something "natural" in the creative world that defies control; logic; rules; books; learning - that is instinctive and thus comes from the person alone. That they are born with it - that they are greater for it; that they can stand up upon a pedestal higher than the rest of us (artistically speaking of course).
Well whatever the reason it leads to fights. Personally I think its because we misunderstand the term in itself- and we couple that to the fact that most of us, honestly - well we never went to art school and we didn't learn it and we don't really understand it.
So here's a thought. Art in relation to photography is about speaking to people.
You are speaking to people in visual terms; in a language which has no verbal component, nor motion and often no written component either (though not always of course - sometimes the words written within a photo are key).
Indeed we accept this very readily - we openly say "A photo paints a 1000 words" and other such similar statements.
So we do indeed accept that photography is, in part, a language form. Now if we build from there we already know that the language we speak; that we learned more by instinct from youth (at least for our mother tongue(s) is a language with structure. It has rules, conventions and concepts within it that allow us to speak to each other and be understood.
Now we've accepted that languages have a structure to them. Rules that underpin how we communicate with them that allows one person to speak to the other. We also know that these structures have localizations and further that the formal structure is not always what we use. In fact most of us bumble along very understandably in a more casual manner. It's not "better" nor "worse" overall; its just different.
Thus I would liken photography and art to language.
We can learn both through the osmosis of growing up and we can learn both formally. We can "break" or "twist" the rules that we are given; but we also cannot just "break" things without learning them first. We have to learn how those rules work; why they work; what contexts they requires to work - then we can work on breaking them.
Art, like language, is built to work like that. Because often from the foundation of twisting things we get new theories; new ways of structuring the language which give rules to new "rules" which can establish themselves in time within the population.
Art is very much the same.
So what are the rules - the rules are in books. They are in great works of the past and present; they are in the studies of visual communication. They are not something to be feared; to be discounted nor to be twisted to nothing. They are a structure and if we can but learn that structure; or at least a part of it, then it can only take our artistic communication further - take our creativity further (because as we understand how to speak visually better thus we are vastly more free to speak on more subjects; on more themes and with more clarity).