A Rose Is Not A Rose
Guy Tal wrote such an excellent article today on Fine Art Photography that I can’t help but share some of his thoughts, and especially how they relate to mine. Please go read the entire post on his site; and enjoy the imagery posted with the article.
In discussing what makes fine art; and especially as it pertains to photography, and the distinction between fine art and documentary photography, Tal writes:
Certainly documentary images can be made that possess immense beauty — a beauty inherent in the subjects themselves. This alone does not qualify such images as examples of fine art as they lack a critical ingredient to qualify as art in the first place: creativity. Further, all art is a product of human thought, imagination, and intuition. The fact that a naturally-occurring phenomenon by itself is perceived as beautiful does not alone make it an incarnation of art.”
I could not agree more on what Guy has written. I have long acknowledged that photographers seem to come from one of two mindsets. The scientific or documentary mindset where photography is about the rules; and the quest to reproduce the world as mirror images of what exists with technological accuracy. These photographers are usually the ones that can talk for hours about f-stops and lens mumbo-jumbo. The other mindset is the creative or fine art photographer. While they may know the technology, their use for facts and rules is only in how it can be manipulated in helping them interpret what they see into images of what they feel. It is exactly that difference, between creating an image of what exists, and using what exists to express what the photographer feels, is what really separates the two fields.
While a photograph of a rose may be beautiful, one must ask themselves: Is the photograph itself beautiful, or is it the rose that’s beautiful?”. Most would tend to answer both, but if the photographer has simply captured the beauty found in the rose, how does it make the photograph itself beautiful? How does it make it anything more than just a beautiful reproduction of what already exists in mother nature?
But if the photographer uses the rose as an interpretive element to express their feelings or emotions, the photograph becomes the work of art. Such is the case with the expressive image Aether, above, in which fine art photographer Daniel Sroka has used the rose as a prop in expressing movement and feeling. While the interpretation of the image may change according to the viewer, there is no question it is the photograph, or image, itself which is beautiful, not just the subject. The subject has become abstract – unrecognizable as a rose – but the image is powerful and suggestive.
I wish I had just a simple photograph of a rose to better illustrate my point, but short of finding one online, which I won’t do, or going to the florist and taking one, which I can’t do because my camera is still at the hospital…..or sending you to Google Images to do a search for Rose, which will turn up thousands of examples. There is a big difference between a photograph of a beautiful thing and a beautiful photograph of a thing. In one it is the creative insight of the photographer that makes the image, in the other it is the technology of photography.
In: Art · Tagged with: Daniel Sroka, documentary, expression, fine art, photography, rose
on February 27, 2010 at 3:47 am
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You have said what I have had trouble expressing. I am in a photo club whose members are mostly geeky men — engineers, NASA contractors, etc. They absolutely love HDR, landscapes with every blade of grass to the farthest mountain perfectly sharp, huge panaromas of downtown Houston that cover several blocks, macro shots using software to combine multiple images so everything in the frame is in focus — you get my drift I am sure! And it is by learning from that club that I have come a long way since my 2 black and white film classes. But I love blur — shallow depth of field, motion blur, panning, selective focus images like Lensbabies take. I often have a conversation with myself on whether an image I like but I know will not score well with those judges is worth submitting…sometimes I am brave and do it just to make them think a little differently for a few minutes. I am not saying that technically perfect shots cannot be beautiful images too…but for me there is usually a difference. Your explanation of the difference between basically documentary and fine art photography makes so much sense to me. I want to link to this post in my own blog sometime soon — do you mind? And I actually have a rose shot that I have not been brave enough to post!!! I hope no one reads my comments here though…
on February 28, 2010 at 3:00 pm
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Thanks for your comments CJ. I have written about camera clubs before, but I’m not sure where or if the post exists anymore. I have been trying to find it but can’t seem to, so it must of been on a previous incarnation of my blog which doesn’t exist anymore. I really need to learn to keep hard copies of some of my postings!
Anyhow, because it doesn’t exist I will have to rewrite it. I generally think camera clubs are a horrible idea and kill any creativity or individuality a photographer may possess going in. Stay tuned for my full opinions…