Photography and its Influence on Modern Art
Paul Fox
was earning my B.A. I've heard many times over and over again that that
photography directly influenced the modern art, especially of the
Impressionists. However, later I received a third-hand statement from a
photograph scholar that link between photography and modern art has been
blown way out of proportion. What is your arguement?
lake
negative way. I mean, it's a lot of work to render something exactly,
with all the little details & reflections and so on. It can be fun, but
it's time-consuming and laborious. Conceptually speaking, a camera does
the same thing automatically, thoughtlessly, easily.
I'm a Go player, & one of the things I learned from Go is that a big
part of ultimate victory is knowing how and when to beat a stategic
retreat.
A photo is not a painting - so what is it about a painting that makes
it different, more rewarding and pleasureable in a way, than
photography? This question requires a lot of meditation, and out of the
meditation arise many of the currents of modern painting.
-Lake
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Erik A. Mattila
After thinking about this for a day, I'm inclined to agree with the
photographer -- that it's a bit over-blown.
The only solid connection I can make is that some Impressionists, Monet for
example, may have responded to photography on the level of composition. So we
see in some of Monet's paintings figures cropped by the edge of the canvas, and
that sort ot thing that we would expect from a photo. There may be other
examples -- that's just what I can think of right now in any concrete sense.
One the other hand, it's easier to see the influence of painting in
photography. Since taking a photograph is a selective process, the artist can
make a broad range of choices regarding the subject, such as composition,
values, focal lengths etc. I've noticed over the years that photos from the
early 20th century were 'composed' much like paintings, given that the artist
could have made the shot without selecting the kinds of compositions that we
are familiar with in painting.
The old argument that the invention of the camera freed the artist from
representation is pretty silly, in my opinion. As if there ever was a
compelling need to represent in the first place - a pressure that was relieved
by the camera. And of course painters continued to represent anyway, while
photographers began looking at microcosoms as a source of non-representation.
Erik Mattila
Erik A. Mattila
> Well I'm a modern artist and it sure influenced ME. Mostly in a
> negative way. I mean, it's a lot of work to render something exactly,
> with all the little details & reflections and so on. It can be fun, but
> it's time-consuming and laborious. Conceptually speaking, a camera does
> the same thing automatically, thoughtlessly, easily.
>
> I'm a Go player, & one of the things I learned from Go is that a big
> part of ultimate victory is knowing how and when to beat a stategic
> retreat.
>
> A photo is not a painting - so what is it about a painting that makes
> it different, more rewarding and pleasureable in a way, than
> photography? This question requires a lot of meditation, and out of the
> meditation arise many of the currents of modern painting.
Well, the important difference is that the photo represents 'truth' while a
painting does not. When you look at a Mapplethorp which depicts a guy shoving
his arm up the rectum of another man, to the elbow, it is hard to escape the
onus of reality. "That's a picture of something that really happened." That's
what hits you.
And now that 'truth' factor is falling to pieces with the advent of digital
manipulation. I think, however, that the 'truth value' still persists in
culture, as regards photography, regardless of the advancements in the
technology of deception. I remember seeing a Walter Cronkite documentary on TV
some years back which was more or less an expose of the deception of the media
news industry. Cronkite dwelled on the issue of stock footage, where a regular
practice was showing footage of military activity shot in Zaire in 1975 to
depict a skirmish in Uganda in 1989. WWII night bombs on the horizon to show
what was happening in the Iran/Iraq conflict, and so forth.
Yet we still believe in photography in a way that we've never believed in
painting (even "History Painting," for that matter, which was always publically
accepted as either embellished or glorified).
So I think that photography's particular power (and I disagree with you totally
that painting is somehow more rewarding and pleasurable) is it's inability to
shake of the onus of truth. It is difficult to make photography fictive, in
other words. I can probably sit down with Adobe Photoshop and build, pixel by
pixel, a representation of a photograph that would ultimately stand for 'truth'
regardless of it's deception. (actuall, that's a pretty good idea - I might
pursue that.)
The most striking photograph that I've ever seen (and this is very subjective)
was a Cartier-Bresson representation of a Eunich standing outside the gates of
the Forbidden City in Bejing. It was awsome because it was so alien --
something that was completely beyond my comprehension or understanding. But at
the core of my response to this image was the conviction that it was 'truth.'
That this person actually existed.
Erik Mattila
lake
But you've sure made an important point when you imply that photography
altered our perception of "truth".
Painting WAS concerned with "truth" before photography came along
though - think of the Renaissance masters, or Rembrandt - but it was
truth of a very subjective sort. It was always truth according to some
one. The camera provided an anonymous truth, seemingly independent of
the teller, and therefor perhaps more reliable, or more inclusive. And
certainly more democratic. It's no wonder that it superceded painting
as the primary form of visual documentation.
So now we have the TV networks broadcasting photographic truth to all
and sundry. Selective truth to be sure, but truth all the same. Maybe
any truth at all is better than none - I'm not sure. But you've got me
thinking.
- Lake
Paul Fox
interesting, I'm required now to to state two pieces of information.
First, I would never attempt in my life to state that painting was in any
way superior to photography. To me, these are just two different mediums.
Second, when I asked about the influence on Modern Artists I failed to take
into account people's perceptions of what modernity is, and most
importantingly, when modernity occurred. I was discussing modernity from
the 19th century to the mid-20th century.
I hope this aids in the discussion.
Paul Fox <fo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6OHz4.3538$511.1...@tw11.nn.bcandid.com...
Helen A. Bucket
WoN ereH wrote in message <20000315144137...@ng-xe1.aol.com>...
>Paul Fox asked:
>>(snip) that link between photography and modern art has been
>>blown way out of proportion. What is your arguement?
Ever notice how painters didn't cut off people's hands or the tops of their
heads in their compositions until after 1827 or so? Photography helped put
arbitrary frames around the artist's field of vision. Artists like Degas,
who used photographs as a tool, cropped reality in ways that hadn't been
thought of before.
Further, before photography, the job of representing "life" accurately was
left up to skilled craftsman. After the invention of the Kodak Brownie, any
housewife could create (albeit bad) portraits of her family. Up until that
point, only the very wealthy had any idea what their ancestors looked like.
Before that point in history, only people who could afford to have a painter
come to the home and spend hours with the subject would have any inkling
what grandpa looked like when he was 20. Photography not only afforded
artists an odd way of editing the images they saw (i.e. cropping images of
people at the ankles or calves) but it also liberated the fine artist from
the tyranny of realism.
The work of Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko could not exist without the
invention of photography, IMHO. That invention liberated artists from the
need to represent life exactly, and opened the door for artists to interpret
reality as they saw fit. Once the "representational" bit was resolved,
painters and other artists could move on to other forms of vison.
The bummer for fine-art photographers is that the same rules which apply to
painters also apply to photographers. Simply recording life through a
machine is simply not enough--a photographer must move beyond mere
representation of events and try to occupy the space in which artists with
charcoal or clay often occupy. It's VERY difficult, but when it works, the
results are stunning.
We photogs have learned that a representation of reality rendered in
geletain and silver on paper is no more real than the same scene rendered in
oils.
>
>Artists are like sponges. Everything they are exposed to influences them
some
>way or another. Why I now avoid the evening news, horror movies and my
mother
>in law whenever possible.
>Debra
>www.SculptureArtist.com
Yeeks! Sounds like the makings of a fine-art photo series in the making.
;-)
take care,
helen
John Haber
saw less reason to pursue truth in representation when they saw
photography do it. That's probably true, so I'll just add two
qualifiers.
First, obviously painters are a diverse group. No doubt some cared
and some didn't, and Cubism right off thought of all kinds of signs --
from text to pictures -- as ways of seeing to be juxtaposed. And on
the one hand before modernism painting was already naturally moving
from representing better to reflecting on the process and nature of
representation, while on the other hand photography dates early enough
to have helped representation, too! It may well have helped toward
the trend of getting reality right by assembling light's impact dot by
dot, say. So I'll just sat that there's no certain connection, just
lots of impulses toward dispersing and analyzing art and reality --
what modernism did well.
Second, a show in Dallas is now making the opposite claim to the
official one, or so I've read: it argues that photography showed how
represention is arbitrary, and truth messy, because photographs are so
easily manipulated! a good article on this in today's NY Times
(Saturday).
john
xx
> I'll like to start a question that I never was able to answer when I
>was earning my B.A. I've heard many times over and over again that that
>photography directly influenced the modern art, especially of the
>Impressionists. However, later I received a third-hand statement from a
>blown way out of proportion. What is your arguement?
>
>
Thought you might find this interesting. It was written by Paul Valery,
in the 1930s, of Degas, who he had known well (BTW the "noble animal"
referred to is the racehorse):
"He was amongst the first to study the real positions of the noble
animal in movement, in the 'instantaneous' photographs taken by Major
Muybridge. For he had a liking and appreciation for photography at a
time when artists still despised it, or dared not admit they made use of
it. He took some very fine ones himself, and I still treasure one
particular enlargement he gave me."
He then goes on to describe a photograph taken of Mallarme and Renoir
lit by oil lamps (apparently they had to remain still for fifteen
minutes for the exposure).
--
Jonathan Clift
Walter Idema
a new idea, it was because of the tiny pixels. The phenomenon that basic
color laid in tiny dots next to eachother cause the illusion of variation.
Rather than mixing the paint (which dulls the hue), one could create
brilliant richness by adding dabs. And also along these lines there was the
idea that objects were reflecting eachother's colors, even the very air is
said to contain the colors of the surrounding environment. In this way the
entire canvas should reflect the over all harmony, and using all the same
colors in every object by calculating the number of strokes each color to
vary across areas.
Erik A. Mattila <emat...@tomatoweb.com> wrote in message
news:38D01880...@tomatoweb.com...
> Paul Fox wrote:
>
> > I'll like to start a question that I never was able to answer
when I
> > was earning my B.A. I've heard many times over and over again that that
> > photography directly influenced the modern art, especially of the
> > Impressionists. However, later I received a third-hand statement from a
> > photograph scholar that link between photography and modern art has been
> > blown way out of proportion. What is your arguement?
>
Walter Idema
position. The paintings are always more lively. I can take the liberties
of looking "around" objects for enhanced detail and "bring out" more of the
interesting highlights. The same photos will look flat, dull and much of
the more interesting detail is lost. One particular scene was so vivid in
reality that I was stunned with the identical results in both the painting
and the photo. However in my painting I was able to omit tree branches that
were obscuring the view and a photographer who was on the scene that day had
to take a long time painstakingly and dangerously positioning his expensive
equipment right to the edge of the cliff trying to omit the same problems.
He was not just joking around when he casually remarked that it was easier
for me to paint the scene than for him to photograph it. Another
consideration is the fact that the spectrums of color vary slightly between
the abilities of photography and what is available in paint. Sadly, neither
match the spectrum that our eyes are able to perceive in nature. If I am
not mistaken, oil paint offers a wider pallet than photo, although photo
seems to handle the cooler colors a little better.
lake <lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:12a590d0...@usw-ex0106-048.remarq.com...
> Well I'm a modern artist and it sure influenced ME. Mostly in a
> negative way. I mean, it's a lot of work to render something exactly,
> with all the little details & reflections and so on. It can be fun, but
> it's time-consuming and laborious. Conceptually speaking, a camera does
> the same thing automatically, thoughtlessly, easily.
>
> I'm a Go player, & one of the things I learned from Go is that a big
> part of ultimate victory is knowing how and when to beat a stategic
> retreat.
>
> A photo is not a painting - so what is it about a painting that makes
> it different, more rewarding and pleasureable in a way, than
> photography? This question requires a lot of meditation, and out of the
> meditation arise many of the currents of modern painting.
>
> -Lake
Erik A. Mattila
Maybe that led to the invention of the camera, eh? (I joke).
I do think, however, that the camera played a key role in French Naturalism,
however. But I think that French painters realized the short depth of field of
the human eys, although this understanding might have come from the
photograph. At any rate, I'm just opposing the idea that the photograph
somehow robbed painters of their compulsion of portray the world they saw
before them. There's such a plethora of influences that one can site that may
have caused some rethinking of vision - like quantum mechanics and optical
science and so on. It was a very inventive age - say, between 1850 and 1950.
Now, if we read the science news, discoveries come so fast and furious that we
lay people can't even digest them properly. Burp -- my reaction to the human
genome project - since they now think they encode our personalties on a
microchip and send it off to Alpha Centauri, and on arrival nanotechnicianss
will reassemble us anew.
Erik
Erik A. Mattila
c wrote:
> According to Erik A. Mattila <emat...@tomatoweb.com>:
> + Well, the important difference is that the photo represents 'truth' while a
> + painting does not.
>
> hi Erik,
> i'm having trouble with your use of the word truth. where you use it i
> would use real or existent, i see no reason to link truth only with
> something you can take a photo of, which is what you appear to be doing
> in the above, have i misunderstood? or are you just saying that a
> it can be agreed that a photo is true _because_ one can point
> to the physical reality of it?
> cheers,
> c
I thinking I'm saying all the above, or none of the above - maybe both.
But I think I made my point with examples. It's a truism that we find
photography compelling because we it as a representation of something that
actually happened. That's why we like movie stars much more than their work.
But you couldn't say the same thing for Michelangelo's "David" or Boticelli's
"Venus on the Halfshell." These are compelling images for other reasons - other
than 'verisimilitude.'
But know, I was using the word 'truth' in the way the ancient's did - fidelity.
I wasn't talking about kozmic truff.
Erik
Try reading Derrida's "The Truth in Painting."
Sylvia
do it here:
"Paul Fox" <fo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I appreciate everyone's input to my post, and though I've found them
> interesting, I'm required now to to state two pieces of information.
>
> First, I would never attempt in my life to state that painting was in
any
> way superior to photography. To me, these are just two different
mediums.
>
> Second, when I asked about the influence on Modern Artists I failed
to take
> into account people's perceptions of what modernity is, and most
> importantingly, when modernity occurred. I was discussing modernity
from
> the 19th century to the mid-20th century.
>
> I hope this aids in the discussion.
I do both painting and photography so they blend in my take on your
discussion:
Painting not done to cover walls, is always art. Photography is not
always art, just as written words are not always art. Often
photography, like words are used to tell a truth. Is this art? Not
always; sometimes it is information. There was abstract art before the
invention of photography. What about African art that stylizes the
forms so beautifully? We don't call it modern but it fits into these
same methods of doing art.
To me, whether it be in painting or photography it is the connection
between the artist and the viewer that creates a presence within the
inner part of a person. That makes art work. A certain, 'truth' is to
be found in photographs but also in paintings. If we look at the
light, images and color of either, we may later dream of the thing we
saw or remember it, if it touched or moved us.
As to the influence of photography on modern art, I feel we would have
moved toward the, 'modern' in art, even if photography had come before
painting. I think, what we deem to be, 'modern,' or some similar
concept, has always been the way we discribed our own novel creations
in our own times. Then we look back and find they were not so very
modern.
The images of photography have no more 'truth' in them than the images
of the fine artist who painted to tell his 'truth.' It is the
subconscious mind that tells each of us his own truth and we sometimes
discover that what we thought true was a lie, yet we gain insight.
Poetry has been called, "the lie that tells the truth."
So my conclusion is that the photograph, in telling the 'truth' may or
may not touch or move us, may or may not be art; it embodies more than
the criteria we set for painting, which by it's very nature is always
art.
This factor was the major influence of photography on "modern art."
That a photograph could create a presence in the artist and viewer,
immediately brought it into place as an art form. That new way of
seeing and linking our imaginations to the images of our loved ones or
beloved places or the unexpected, whatever, opened us up to other new
ways of dealing with images externally and in our inner being. It,
like all change, was bound to happen.
Sylvia
> Paul Fox <fo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> > I'll like to start a question that I never was able to answer when
> I
> > was earning my B.A. I've heard many times over and over again that
that
> > photography directly influenced the modern art, especially of the
> > Impressionists. However, later I received a third-hand statement
from a
> > photograph scholar that link between photography and modern art has
been
> > blown way out of proportion. What is your arguement?
> >
> >
>
>
--
If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear as it is, infinite.
- William Blake
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Helen A. Bucket
Erik A. Mattila wrote in message <38D01E26...@tomatoweb.com>...
>lake wrote:
>
>
>Well, the important difference is that the photo represents 'truth' while a
>painting does not.
Not necessarily. One person might look at a photograph by Sally Mann and
think, "Obviously those children had horrible childhoods of abuse. Look at
that poor little naked girl surrounded by guests at a dinner party!" Another
person will think, "God, if I had a nickel for everytime my kid shed her
clothes. Kids just seem happier that way." Which is the truth?
All the meanings and appearances of a photograph by someone who took a photo
with a certain intent are changed from the way they occurred in life. If
Keith Carter takes a photograph of a tree and he tilts the back of his
camera so that half of the tree is out of focus, and then he prints the
square negative full-frame, does that mean that in life that half the tree
was blurry and the world was square that day? Probably not.
>When you look at a Mapplethorpe which depicts a guy shoving
>his arm up the rectum of another man, to the elbow, it is hard to escape
the
>onus of reality. "That's a picture of something that really happened."
That's
>what hits you.
Perhaps, but when Joel-Peter Witkin does the same photograph, it's important
to ask, "Was the 'fistee' an amputee?" In the case of Witkin's photo "Arm
F**k" that is actually true. So what if what you're looking at is not really
what you think is happening in the image? Photographs are a translation of
reality just like a charcoal sketch or that photograph of branch that
everyone thinks is the Loch Ness Monster. Unfortunately, photographs end up
taking the censorship heat when questions of impropriety come up because
people have learned to accept any and all photographic representations as
"true".
>
>And now that 'truth' factor is falling to pieces with the advent of digital
>manipulation. I think, however, that the 'truth value' still persists in
>culture, as regards photography, regardless of the advancements in the
>technology of deception. I remember seeing a Walter Cronkite documentary
on TV
>some years back which was more or less an expose of the deception of the
media
>news industry. Cronkite dwelled on the issue of stock footage, where a
regular
>practice was showing footage of military activity shot in Zaire in 1975 to
>depict a skirmish in Uganda in 1989.
What is acceptable in journalism is not what is acceptable in art, BTW. Any
journalist who monkeys with the recording capabilities of his equipment, or
who manipulates or lies about facts does a disservice to everyone, artists
included.
>Yet we still believe in photography in a way that we've never believed in
>painting (even "History Painting," for that matter, which was always
publically
>accepted as either embellished or glorified).
>
>So I think that photography's particular power (and I disagree with you
totally
>that painting is somehow more rewarding and pleasurable) is it's inability
to
>shake of the onus of truth. It is difficult to make photography fictive,
I agree with your assessment of photography only on a journalistic level.
Photography can be as fictive as any endeavor. As far as art goes, the
photographer is basically editing life. I can photograph a child surrounded
lillies and vines. No one will ever know that two feet to the left and right
of her were a dead speedboat and the carcass of a dog (true story). I find
any artistic endeavor equally rewarding. We're all doing the same
thing--editing life.
in
>other words. I can probably sit down with Adobe Photoshop and build, pixel
by
>pixel, a representation of a photograph that would ultimately stand for
'truth'
>regardless of it's deception. (actuall, that's a pretty good idea - I
might
>pursue that.)
People who instantly judge photographs as the truth are missing the point,
IMO.
>
>The most striking photograph that I've ever seen (and this is very
subjective)
>was a Cartier-Bresson representation of a Eunich standing outside the gates
of
>the Forbidden City in Bejing. It was awsome because it was so alien --
>something that was completely beyond my comprehension or understanding.
But at
>the core of my response to this image was the conviction that it was
'truth.'
>That this person actually existed.
Perhaps true. Cartier-Bresson did take the photo and it WAS in Beiijing,
apparently, but there's no way of telling whether he asked the man to stand
in a particular place (even though that wasn't Cartier-Bresson's professed
way of working). Sure, the person existed, but my step-daughter could've
taken a photograph of him, too. It would most likely have had nowhere near
the impact of the photograph you're talking about.
In short (okay, long) photography might represent the truth, but it is a
subjective truth--one not much less subjective than that of the painter or
sculptor. And one that is just as rewarding.
helen
Erik A. Mattila
'stands for' in culture versus what painting 'stands for.' It needn't get
overly complex. When people look at a photograph, part of it's messsage is
that the image is a recording of something that happened outside the four
corners of the face of the image.
Of course "not necessarily." Now if you wish to disagree, you would have to
disagree with my observation that this is how photography is regarded,
generally. Your argument would have to say something along the lines of "No,
people do not think of a photograph as a record of something that happened
beyond the photo." And then provide some examples that would show that it is
incorrect to state that people do in fact regard the photograph this way.
And if you're really into it, go further and build a case which would
demonstrate that people regard paintings as a record of something that happened
beyond the four corners of the face of the painting.
"Helen A. Bucket" wrote:
> Erik A. Mattila wrote in message <38D01E26...@tomatoweb.com>...
> >lake wrote:
> >
>
> >
> >Well, the important difference is that the photo represents 'truth' while a
> >painting does not.
>
> Not necessarily. One person might look at a photograph by Sally Mann and
> think, "Obviously those children had horrible childhoods of abuse. Look at
> that poor little naked girl surrounded by guests at a dinner party!" Another
> person will think, "God, if I had a nickel for everytime my kid shed her
> clothes. Kids just seem happier that way." Which is the truth?
Overly complex. People will look at this photo and assume it is a image of
something beyond the photo itself, regardless of a range of 'readings.'
> All the meanings and appearances of a photograph by someone who took a photo
> with a certain intent are changed from the way they occurred in life. If
> Keith Carter takes a photograph of a tree and he tilts the back of his
> camera so that half of the tree is out of focus, and then he prints the
> square negative full-frame, does that mean that in life that half the tree
> was blurry and the world was square that day? Probably not.
Overly complex. The idea that something existed that was recorded by the
camera is not dependent on the question of a faithful treatment.
> >When you look at a Mapplethorpe which depicts a guy shoving
> >his arm up the rectum of another man, to the elbow, it is hard to escape
> the
> >onus of reality. "That's a picture of something that really happened."
> That's
> >what hits you.
>
> Perhaps, but when Joel-Peter Witkin does the same photograph, it's important
> to ask, "Was the 'fistee' an amputee?" In the case of Witkin's photo "Arm
> F**k" that is actually true. So what if what you're looking at is not really
> what you think is happening in the image? Photographs are a translation of
> reality just like a charcoal sketch or that photograph of branch that
> everyone thinks is the Loch Ness Monster. Unfortunately, photographs end up
> taking the censorship heat when questions of impropriety come up because
> people have learned to accept any and all photographic representations as
> "true".
Overly complex. Whether the photo is regarded as fake or real, people still
will see it as a record of something beyond the four corners of the photo.
>
> >And now that 'truth' factor is falling to pieces with the advent of digital
> >manipulation. I think, however, that the 'truth value' still persists in
> >culture, as regards photography, regardless of the advancements in the
> >technology of deception. I remember seeing a Walter Cronkite documentary
> on TV
> >some years back which was more or less an expose of the deception of the
> media
> >news industry. Cronkite dwelled on the issue of stock footage, where a
> regular
> >practice was showing footage of military activity shot in Zaire in 1975 to
> >depict a skirmish in Uganda in 1989.
>
> What is acceptable in journalism is not what is acceptable in art, BTW. Any
> journalist who monkeys with the recording capabilities of his equipment, or
> who manipulates or lies about facts does a disservice to everyone, artists
> included.
Are you arguing that artist's never deceive (heheehe). Come on. But what does
your response have to do with the issue at hand?
> >Yet we still believe in photography in a way that we've never believed in
> >painting (even "History Painting," for that matter, which was always
> publically
> >accepted as either embellished or glorified).
> >
> >So I think that photography's particular power (and I disagree with you
> totally
> >that painting is somehow more rewarding and pleasurable) is it's inability
> to
> >shake of the onus of truth. It is difficult to make photography fictive,
>
> I agree with your assessment of photography only on a journalistic level.
> Photography can be as fictive as any endeavor. As far as art goes, the
> photographer is basically editing life. I can photograph a child surrounded
> lillies and vines. No one will ever know that two feet to the left and right
> of her were a dead speedboat and the carcass of a dog (true story). I find
> any artistic endeavor equally rewarding. We're all doing the same
> thing--editing life.
Bull pucky. Regardless what is edited, the viewer still responds to the truth
of photography. In painting, we have 'photo-realism' which is kind of
interesting. It's a painting designed to resembe a photograph, as opposed to
'reality.' It's a metadistortion, more or less. People (even a lot of
artists) confuse 'photorealism' with 'realism' all the time, which is simply
testimony to the truth value of photography in culture.
> in
> >other words. I can probably sit down with Adobe Photoshop and build, pixel
> by
> >pixel, a representation of a photograph that would ultimately stand for
> 'truth'
> >regardless of it's deception. (actuall, that's a pretty good idea - I
> might
> >pursue that.)
>
> People who instantly judge photographs as the truth are missing the point,
> IMO.
I believe you're missing the point (at least my point). No matter how you
stack it up, people will regard a photo as a record of something that 'exists'
beyond the image. I can't state in any simpler than that.
> >
> >The most striking photograph that I've ever seen (and this is very
> subjective)
> >was a Cartier-Bresson representation of a Eunich standing outside the gates
> of
> >the Forbidden City in Bejing. It was awsome because it was so alien --
> >something that was completely beyond my comprehension or understanding.
> But at
> >the core of my response to this image was the conviction that it was
> 'truth.'
> >That this person actually existed.
>
> Perhaps true. Cartier-Bresson did take the photo and it WAS in Beiijing,
> apparently, but there's no way of telling whether he asked the man to stand
> in a particular place (even though that wasn't Cartier-Bresson's professed
> way of working). Sure, the person existed, but my step-daughter could've
> taken a photograph of him, too. It would most likely have had nowhere near
> the impact of the photograph you're talking about.
If your step-daughter did take the photo, it would make no difference to me. I
will still regard the photo as a record of something that existed beyond the
photo itself. I only said this was 'at the core of my response.' I did not
say that I did not respond to Cartier-Bresson's mastery also. But you agree -
"sure, the person existed." So what's your point - that was all I was saying
in the first place?
> In short (okay, long) photography might represent the truth, but it is a
> subjective truth--one not much less subjective than that of the painter or
> sculptor. And one that is just as rewarding.
>
> helen
You're talking about something entirely different than I am. Remember, this
thread is about the possibility of photography having influenced art. I was
pointing out an essential distinction between photography and painting, which
still holds. The difference addresses how the viewer responds to either of the
two types of images. The 'truth' of photography is not subjective at all, in
the least. We only need consider the basic process of a subject, light,
optics, film chemistry etc. to objectively determine that there was a subject
that existed in nature which allowed for the production of the image. That
cannot possibly be construed as a 'subjective truth.'
Erik Mattila
Norman Strand~
looks like a cubist woman decending a staircase photographed by multipule
exposures. It was shown in 1913 in New York. I do not know of any multiple
exposure photographs of the usual type being shown as art at that time,
but combination prints (prints made by printing more that one negative on
a sheet of photographic paper) were common in the 19th century.
I went to the library and looked at some of the books on Marcel Duchamp and I
did not see any more reproductions of paintings of his simular to "Nude
decending a Staircase".
Norman Strand
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