Why is imperfection beautiful?

jonjameshall · Jan 4, 2009

Perfection is a status quo, unmoving, a boundary, stagnant, stubborn.

Imperfection is liquid, a movement away, a new way of looking, a development.

From imperfection comes new ideas, new words, new language, new vision, new ways of describing.

In Perfection, we all look the same, we all see the same, we can say this is or this is not.

Perfection can be achieved by many, it makes us a mass.

Imperfection shows us the individual behind. reveals process, shows us art.

bobwysiwyg · Jan 4, 2009

Imperfection sounds a lot like evolution, a long, if not endless, series of mistakes.

Ian Leake · Jan 4, 2009

I don't really know what 'perfect' means when it comes to photography/art, but I'm sure it can't be achieved. So every picture is imperfect.

Depending on your perspective, intentionally introducing flaws like damaged negatives is either:

(a) introducing randomness which encourages our pattern-matching brain to see unexpected things in the picture; or
(b) introducing magic

Whichever it is, when it's done well it's very, very special.

Ole · Jan 4, 2009

There are lots of allusions to imperfection in religion - as in Christianity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Corinthians_13#.22Through_a_Glass.2C_Darkly.22

Islamic artisans and artists would introduce deliberate flaws in their finest creations, since only Allah can create perfection. Playing "spot the flaw" in Islamic architecture is an interesting game.

Unlike many religious people, I don't believe nature is perfect in any way. If it were perfect it would be static, and ultimately boring. That nature is imperfect and dynamic is very obvious to someone who spends his summers in Loen.

StorminMatt · Jan 9, 2009

You can also look at this from a personal level. 'Perfect' tends to cold, hard, judgemental, and uninviting. Think about a person with no bad habits (doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, etc), exercises seven days a week, eats only the right foods, doesn't have bad breath, never smells, is financially successful, never goes to bed too late, and has neither a blemish on their skin nor a hair out of place. Would you like to hang out with such a person? Probably not. In fact, you would probably have a MUCH better time hanging out with a fun-loving, but MUCH less perfect person - even if you might be annoyed by some of the things that person says from time to time or their pack a day smoking habit. Of course, all of this really follows along the lines of what has been said in previous posts here. But it certainly makes you think about it in more real terms.

ilya1963 · Jan 10, 2009

It's interesting how we all seem to come from different direction to what seems to be the same conclusion .

I just what to thank all that participated here , I have come back to reread some of your posts and find them fascinating .
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Phenix:
"2. The process imperfections, and even faults, like errors and blemishes in developing and manipulating the film and the print. These imperfections seem to emphasize different priorities between form and content, setting big value on the content. In this case, if form had been closer to perfection, the content’s value would have suffered. Here there’s also a sub-category: of the artificially vintaged images. These are fakes, as the imperfect form sends the message there would be a content value in them, but in reality, there is no content value at all, except for melodrama. This is a cheap, pathetic trick, call it “postmodern” (I hate postmodernism)."

"artificially vintaged images" could you elaborate a bit or better yet show examples of these?
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Nicholas Lindan, thank you for your thoughts they brought me back to my childhood , my mother was a sound engineer for a movie studio , I can relate to what you are saying about a "perfect noise"
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Ole , how can you live in such godforsaken imperfect place , I am sure nature has revealed it's powerful "imperfections" there, the closest I ever got to where you are is northern tip of Russia, I can not remember exactly where now , but I remember that Finland was on the other side ...

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Once again thanks to all ... if you have other thoughts on this please post , we may just evolve to something different in our work by thinking out loud here

ILYA

jimgalli · Jan 11, 2009

I'm guilty of not reading through the posts before posting this so it may have been discussed already. But the digital age and photoshop have made everything clinically perfect haven't they. Gone is every imperfection, every spot, every evidence that a human was somewhere involved. Will a day come when someone will pick up one of my warts and all prints and gasp, this is real?

slackercrurster · Sep 4, 2018

Ancient OP...don't know why.

I thought of this thread while scanning an old glass stereo slide today. I try to do minimal clean up of the defects. The defects are part of the history. I will improve on basics such as contrast and the like. And if something has a glaring defect that distracts, I may spot it out. Weegee used to talk about character in his photos. I guess defects add character.

https://archive.org/details/WeegeeTellsHow

Another issue is that of time. Since March 2018 I've made over 14,000 scans plus I've shot tons of my own photos. I'm much worse than Winogrand. I've got photos I've shot going back to 2013/14 that need going through. Although I'm not going to BS you and tell you I want to 'let them age.' My excuse is...I do too much and no time to do it all. And to top that off, I got hundreds of thousands of feet of cine' film to work on and a huge ephemera archive.

Selection from 'All You Need is Love'

Personally I like defects more on vintage work than my own. For my street work I like well composed, clean street photography. With street work you cannot get things perfected all the time. So when I talk about clean, I am talking about decent, but not perfect work.

Going back to Winogrand, much of his work is garbage. I find nothing endearing about the defects in it. The poor comp, crooked mess of strangers on the street is a mish-mash of nothing.

Winogrand from Women are Beautiful series

Here is glass plate I almost bought on eBay last week, but missed out. Think it sold for about $40 with shipping from the UK. I liked it cause of the defects.

Kertez dropped something on his glass plate by accident and broke it. He liked the result and so do I. Just no saying what appeals to us, we are all different. But a nice patina from age can look very beautiful.

Vaughn · Sep 4, 2018

I make my negs, prints and display them as perfectly as I can, knowing full well there will be imperfections. I like the balance.

Theo Sulphate · Sep 4, 2018

It's tempting to say perfection is a bourgeois concept, but that's meaningless.

Regarding an image, for me sometimes what seems imperfect later seems perfect. For example, I have a box that I toss reject prints into and one foggy day I made a Polaroid photo through my window, but the light level was low and the photo was dim and slightly blurred. I tossed it in the box. Not long ago I was sifting through this box and saw that photo - wow, the mood it invoked was just perfect. When I made the photo, I thought I didn't get what I wanted - but looking at the photo now, it's clear I did get what I wanted.

dpurdy · Sep 4, 2018

I miss Ilya 1963 sharing his 8x10 work in the gallery. Been years since he was last there.

Charles Escott-New · Sep 4, 2018

I have been looking at a book of landscape photographs by Sally Mann. Not only are they full of physical imperfections, they also break many so-called rules of composition. They are not tied to the specific geography of the south, but my goodness they put you in that place. They are the best I have seen.

Grandpa Ron · Sep 4, 2018

Beauty has been and always will be, defined "in the eye of the beholder". One persons imperfection is another's character.

cliveh · Sep 4, 2018

What some may say are imperfections, others may regard as the mark of the maker, thus making the image unique to the makers technique. Think Van Gogh and Atget.

jtk · Sep 4, 2018

Imperfections (whatever those seem to be) tend to attract attention.

markjwyatt · Sep 4, 2018

Perfection is a Platonic idea, literally (Google Plato's Ideas or Forms), or it could be interpreted as the intention of God. Regardless, when we see a horse, we compare it to the "perfect" horse. Say an Arabian. The horse we see is not perfect- fur missing on its hind legs, a bump on it head, some imperfections caused by insect bites around its eyes. But even though the horse may not be perfect, we can see it is a horse, and it evokes the image of a perfect horse. In fact without the imperfections, we might not have anything to guide us to seeing the potential of the horse. As long as the imperfect leads us to or towards the perfect, it serves a purpose, in fact, the imperfections can become a/the point of interest (e.g., social justice, "the story" told by lines and wrinkles in an old man's face, etc.). Nothing on the earth is perfect, and if it were, it might be quite boring.

Saganich · Sep 4, 2018

I think the appeal of imperfection in photography is an admission that the world an individual exists in, and is defined by, is imperfect.
Also, there is some Cartesian argument that in order to make photographs that approach our internal representations of the world they would have to be imperfect.
So, in each case images have imperfections as a necessity show both the outside world and our internal representations (dreams memory ideas) of the world are imperfect.
There is another Heidegger inspired idea: what shows up for us in the world perhaps are only the imperfections or that which goes wrong. All the things that we have to think about, worry about, be anxious about, all that goes wrong, flat tires, locked doors, broken grocery bags, failed relationships, we are constantly attending to, so perhaps when the imperfections in photographs show up it's an analog to reality more so than the case of photographic perfection when only the photograph as an object is disclosed. So, to make as close to a perfect image as possible like AA the photographer is essentially removing as much of the imperfection of human life out of the frame perhaps.

Mainecoonmaniac · Sep 4, 2018

The Japanese strive for perfection, but embrace brokeness.

RauschenOderKorn · Sep 4, 2018

Imperfection is actually a very human attribute.

Perfection is very rarely achieved by humans, sometimes leadings to admiration, most of the time causing less positive feelings.

Theo Sulphate · Sep 4, 2018

Is anything tangible perfect?

Not a snowflake, because I've never seen a perfectly symmetrical one.

Not a bubble, since none is perfectly spherical.

I think it is a waste of time to dwell on this concept of perfection. Do the best that you want to do that meets your criteria of satisfaction.

awty · Sep 4, 2018

I love imperfections, I love one off's , rarely make the same picture twice and if I do they're never the same.
Perfection is boring.
Love chaos.
If I had to choose a favorite urban/street photographer it would probably be Winogrand, brilliant.

Maris · Sep 4, 2018

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Of Beauty Francis Bacon

removed account4 · Sep 4, 2018

aren't perfection, beauty and imperfection all the same thing
is there anything that is "perfect" ?
depending on how one looks isn't anything
from a blood splatter to a human to an urban or industrial blight ...
can't they all be described as "beautiful" ?

dpurdy said:
I miss Ilya 1963 sharing his 8x10 work in the gallery. Been years since he was last there.

i know what you mean dennis !

john

Alan Edward Klein · Sep 5, 2018

I'm not too sure we like imperfections so much. If we really accept imperfections, we'd tolerate the people around us more and what they do. We'd complain less. There would be nothing to say in a forum about differences in equipment, style, even whether imperfection is good or bad. You're wrong, I'm right kind of thing.

David Lyga · Sep 5, 2018

Because it opens up, in the human mind, something subliminal, thus impenetrable on the surface, that is not literally stated. It promotes both introspection and deep thought. - David Lyga

Why is imperfection beautiful?

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