The joy of photography

Don_ih · Apr 8, 2025

nikos79 said:
No no I meant that if you believe that photography can be also something connected more closely to Visual Arts in my opinion I will have a hard time debating or trying to persuade you or make my point that is what I meant

At this point in time, it does no good to try to restrict "photography" to the strict, straight output of the action of point a camera and clicking a shutter - not that that has ever been so straightforward, either. Between various manipulations that can be done in camera, to whatever is being photographed, with light, with multiple exposures, not with digital manipulations and combinations - placing different elements of different photos in different layers to render a new image - no one doing any of that is going to claim they are not doing photography.

The practice needs to be contemporary. There is no value ignoring the present and what people are currently doing in photography.

nikos79 · Apr 8, 2025

Don_ih said:
Elaborate. In non-idealized terms.

It is the loss of materiality. The photographer doesn't create the photograph in the way a painter does. The color in a painting has texture, different shades that can hardly be reproduced in a print. Also the print deprives us of the connection we feel with the painter when we stand in front of a real painting. I think there was also some brain research on that they measured the brain waves of people watching paintings on paper vs real ones and was a remarkable more activity in the emotional sectors for the second group

nikos79 · Apr 8, 2025

Don_ih said:
At this point in time, it does no good to try to restrict "photography" to the strict, straight output of the action of point a camera and clicking a shutter - not that that has ever been so straightforward, either. Between various manipulations that can be done in camera, to whatever is being photographed, with light, with multiple exposures, not with digital manipulations and combinations - placing different elements of different photos in different layers to render a new image - no one doing any of that is going to claim they are not doing photography.

The practice needs to be contemporary. There is no value ignoring the present and what people are currently doing in photography.

I know I know. I am currently now looking in my living room at a book of a Photographer I really like Wynn Bullock and his light manipulations which I dislike. I agree it is valid but sorry Don_ih something really doesn't get me attracted to that style of photography

MattKing · Apr 8, 2025

This thread reminds me of one of the most interesting parts of the recent movie "Conclave" which I just watched the Blu-Ray of.
The part about "certainty, faith and doubt".
In my experience, it is far better to expect more of photography, not less.
And if you try to compare it with any of the other performative and communication based forms of Art, you will be depriving yourself of much of its value if what you are seeking to do is rank or prioritize one form of Art above others.

warden · Apr 8, 2025

nikos79 said:
You see the boy of Paul Strand and you know that there was a time that he was there, the photographer was there too, and none of them is there anymore because they are both dead, but the boy will keep looking at you forever, so the time of the photography becomes its own time.

That is one of the reasons I make photos.

“Photography,” Susan Sontag wrote in 1977, “converts the whole world into a cemetery. Photographers, connoisseurs of beauty, are also — wittingly or unwittingly — the recording-angels of death.”

tjwspm · Apr 9, 2025

Alex Benjamin said:
This is a very interesting question. I'm afraid it would be lost in the middle of this thread, which is about something else. My suggestion is to start a post with this thought in the Ethics and Philosophy sub-forum.

Thanks for the hint to make a separate thread out of it. I will do that.

tjwspm · Apr 9, 2025

koraks said:
It reminds me of two things @gary mulder has said to me.
1: practice your scales.
2: don't forget to have a little joie the vivre.
I consider both bits of very valuable advice.

Oh yes, definitely joie de vivre (I'm in France at the moment).
And also humor and compassion.

Don_ih · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
The photographer doesn't create the photograph in the way a painter does. The color in a painting has texture, different shades that can hardly be reproduced in a print.

It's also true that a painter cannot create in the way a photographer does. It is also true that a painter cannot easily reproduce the shades of a photo (colour or black and white). None of that means anything. They're different.

I'd said:

Don_ih said:
There is nothing in painting that cannot be in a photograph.

By which I was referring to content.

cliveh said:
Have you ever felt or seen the texture of paint in a Van Gogh painting?

Which referred to the material medium - but painting is different from photography in that way. (You can, however, have brush strokes in a photographic print, if you apply the emulsion with a brush or if you are careful using a brush with a small amount of very strong developer.)

nikos79 said:
Exactly the color in painting is an essential element it has life

And you slipped into more rarefied, transcendent terminology and implies a comparison between the two (photography and painting) in those terms. And so we meander off once again into the realm of spirituality....

nikos79 · Apr 9, 2025

Don_ih said:
It's also true that a painter cannot create in the way a photographer does. It is also true that a painter cannot easily reproduce the shades of a photo (colour or black and white). None of that means anything. They're different.

I'd said:

By which I was referring to content.

Which referred to the material medium - but painting is different from photography in that way. (You can, however, have brush strokes in a photographic print, if you apply the emulsion with a brush or if you are careful using a brush with a small amount of very strong developer.)

And you slipped into more rarefied, transcendent terminology and implies a comparison between the two (photography and painting) in those terms. And so we meander off once again into the realm of spirituality....

I don't get it, you brought up painting I didn't want to compare these two anyway.
I guess we both agree that painting is very different than photography. As for the statement that there is nothing in painting that cannot be in a photograph I would argue again that the painting is a creation of the painter's mere imagination while a photograph is a creation based on reality

Don_ih · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
As for the statement that there is nothing in painting that cannot be in a photograph I would argue again that the painting is a creation of the painter's mere imagination while a photograph is a creation based on reality

Take a photo of the painting.

Gordon Parks used to make painted backgrounds for still-life photos - didn't use those for anything else, but they were paintings. That you can't conceive that photography can be a product of one's imagination doesn't mean that it can't.

Alex Benjamin · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
the painting is a creation of the painter's mere imagination while a photograph is a creation based on reality

My suggestion is for you to get a book on 17th-Century Dutch painting in order to realize how false a generalization this is.

Svetlana Alpers' The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century is still one of the permier reference on the subject.

nikos79 · Apr 9, 2025

Alex Benjamin said:
My suggestion is for you to get a book on 17th-Century Dutch painting in order to realize how false a generalization this is.

Svetlana Alpers' The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century is still one of the permier reference on the subject.

I never heard of the book, well thanks for the recommendation you got me now curious to check it and maybe learn something new.
I suspect though it speaks about painting very close to realism. I have to admit I know nothing about painting. While about photography I can say I know a few. But based on what I assumed about this book and Dutch painting in the 17th century I would still insist that photography starts from the real, external world whereas painting, even when realistic, begins from an internal act of construction. I mean think about it, in photography you are literally using elements of the real world!

P.S. Sorry for the many linguistic and grammatical errors in my last posts without Chat AI my responses are now very poor

Alex Benjamin · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
But based on what I assumed about this book and Dutch painting in the 17th century...

Reading, then assuming is a much better order of things .

And don't worry about your English. It's fine.

Don_ih · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
I would still insist that photography starts from the real, external world whereas painting, even when realistic, begins from an internal act of construction

I am presently thinking I'll take a camera out with a couple of sheets of film to take 2 photographs of perhaps a tree. I can look out my window and see lots of trees but none that I want to photograph. I will look for a specific tree - one that meets my idealized notion of a good, photographable tree. I'm sure one exists somewhere. Of course, the tree may not be situated exactly as I envision. Perhaps I can't access it easily. There are invariably stumbling blocks to realizing one's photographic vision. That I'm not using paint and canvass is not one of those stumbling blocks. I still want the end result without having yet seen the subject.

nikos79 · Apr 9, 2025

Don_ih said:
I am presently thinking I'll take a camera out with a couple of sheets of film to take 2 photographs of perhaps a tree. I can look out my window and see lots of trees but none that I want to photograph. I will look for a specific tree - one that meets my idealized notion of a good, photographable tree. I'm sure one exists somewhere. Of course, the tree may not be situated exactly as I envision. Perhaps I can't access it easily. There are invariably stumbling blocks to realizing one's photographic vision. That I'm not using paint and canvass is not one of those stumbling blocks. I still want the end result without having yet seen the subject.

That is absolutely valid I didn't meant that by using elements of the reality you limit your creativity! On the contrary! Why you both think this is such a bad thing? Because in photography more than any other art you are close to reality. It may be your reality in the end, your tree, your goal, your vision, but if I lock you in a dark empty cell you will do nothing

Don_ih · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
Why you both think this is such a bad thing?

I don't think either of us (Alex, me) think it is a bad thing. I think that, what is a bad thing, is how you try to use one art form to spell the limitations of another in a kind of ranking - when they are simply different art forms. But the salient point is that they are both art and, as such, a product of human activity - not simple mechanical plodding. The limitations of the device are not the limitations of the end result.

nikos79 said:
Because in photography more than any other art you are close to reality.

That is a limitation you claim, but not one that is readily universally accepted.

warden · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
. I mean think about it, in photography you are literally using elements of the real world!

Google Tim’s Vermeer and the topic of comparator mirrors and see if you still think they were not using elements of the real world well before cameras as we know them existed.

Don_ih · Apr 9, 2025

The fact is, there is no hard impassible border between photography and painting. Like @warden said, there have been devices to aid in sketching for a very long time. But also, painters have long copied photos or taken inspiration from photos or actually pasted photos into their work. Similarly, people have been marking on negatives for as long as they've existed. People have been combining negatives into composites for a long time, also. The use of a camera is not restricted to the sharp, accurate recording of "reality" at all. There are numerous ways to intentionally mess around with the camera, lights, lenses, film, chemicals, or paper to get something that looks far different from what was in front of the camera.

MattKing · Apr 9, 2025

We have a few of my late mother's paintings on the walls of our place. Many of them are paintings of scenes that I remember from when my parents lived in the area.
Here is one example - a look at their home back then:

I happen to know that Mom worked from one of Dad's photos for this

Alex Benjamin · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
Because in photography more than any other art you are close to reality.

Tell that to cinematographers.

Alex Benjamin · Apr 9, 2025

Speaking of Vermeer and the depiction of reality...

Vue of Delft (definitely not Kodachrome, certainly not Fuji, but maybe Ektar, with a touch of polarizing filtering to bring out the clouds )

nikos79 · Apr 9, 2025

Alex Benjamin said:
Tell that to cinematographers.

Cinema is farther from reality than photography. A film tells a story a photograph can only describe the reality it can do nothing more. In a sense it is a very poor art

MattKing · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
Cinema is farther from reality than photography. A film tells a story a photograph can only describe the reality it can do nothing more. In a sense it is a very poor art

This comment reveals a very narrow view of Art I'm afraid.
There is a reason that the world considers Stanley Kubrick as having progressed from being a competent photographer to being a genius as a film director with a cinematographer's eye.

Alex Benjamin · Apr 9, 2025

nikos79 said:
Cinema is farther from reality than photography. A film tells a story a photograph can only describe the reality it can do nothing more.

...and one can easily counter-argue that the fact that in a movie people move, i.e., are subject to a temporality that is the same as reality, makes it an art closer to reality than photography, which stops time, something impossible to do in reality.

It can also easily be argued that any example of Italian neorealism, French nouvelle vague or cinéma-vérité are closer to reality than, say, Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills.

nikos79 said:
In a sense it is a very poor art

Again with the judgement and the hierarchy... Why does one thing always have to be better or worse, or more or less, than the other? My must some things be discarted with a lapidary and dismissive verbal gesture? You can't have this gatekeeping and at the same time desire enrichig conversations.

nikos79 · Apr 10, 2025

MattKing said:
This comment reveals a very narrow view of Art I'm afraid.
There is a reason that the world considers Stanley Kubrick as having progressed from being a competent photographer to being a genius as a film director with a cinematographer's eye.

Kubrick (whom i love) is not a genius. He is a very good master of the art but mediocre director that always resolves to his cheap tricks to impress (same as Hichcock) e.g. not one that has something essential to say as opposed to the Italian neorrealism you mentioned

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