In looking at photographs, making them, and then writing about them, it has never seemed quite enough to say that the medium’s distinctions are purely physical; that a light-sensitive emulsion, a lens, a shutter and a continuous-tone image are the only factors that make a photograph different from a drawing or painting. For example, our reactions to a photo-realist painting, say by Chuck Close, even though it is painstakingly copied from a photograph and looks like one (even incorporating such photographic phenomena as shallow depth-of-field), is quite different from our reaction to the photograph itself. And that reaction is different not just because the photograph might be small and the painting large. It is different because of how the images were made, the acts of observation and creation they imply.
What I want to do here is to investigate the actions that go into making a photograph, because some viewers still seem to harbor the notion that photographs are machine-made objects whose only variables are matters of luck—being in the right place at the right time with the right machine. Looking at and even enjoying photographs without understanding their creation is something like looking at all the people in the world as gifts of the mythical stork. We see them clearly but we have a completely wrong interpretation of their genesis and therefore of life in general.
The gesture of photography is different from the gestures of the other visual arts; I hope to show that photography is no less complex, difficult, and visual. Indeed, my belief is that in many ways fine photography is more purely intellectual, purely visual, because the gestures involved are less connected to hand gestures but much more connected to intense observation, to harder seeing.
Photographers have basically a two-step process: in the first step the image is seen, chosen, and captured on film. The second step involves the re-creation or re-presentation of the image, and most often this step takes place at a later time and place (usually in a darkroom). The bridge between these two steps is film development—a boring necessity. There are acts of discovery, choice, arrangement and craft that take place during both steps, but it is during the first that photography differs most from the other arts.
I find that most photographers emphasize one phase or the other. Either they are at their peak during the camera-vision phase, seeking later to re-create the truth of that moment when they print, or they are at their peak during the printing phase, using the camera-captured images as so much raw material to be manipulated or combined later in the darkroom, for purposes they may never have imagined when they were shooting. Sometimes, too, the creative high-point comes with a concept formulated before the shooting (planned sequences, for example), but even so, numerous unknown variables are encountered during the camera work.
What I want to do here is to investigate the actions that go into making a photograph, because some viewers still seem to harbor the notion that photographs are machine-made objects whose only variables are matters of luck—being in the right place at the right time with the right machine. Looking at and even enjoying photographs without understanding their creation is something like looking at all the people in the world as gifts of the mythical stork. We see them clearly but we have a completely wrong interpretation of their genesis and therefore of life in general.
The gesture of photography is different from the gestures of the other visual arts; I hope to show that photography is no less complex, difficult, and visual. Indeed, my belief is that in many ways fine photography is more purely intellectual, purely visual, because the gestures involved are less connected to hand gestures but much more connected to intense observation, to harder seeing.
Photographers have basically a two-step process: in the first step the image is seen, chosen, and captured on film. The second step involves the re-creation or re-presentation of the image, and most often this step takes place at a later time and place (usually in a darkroom). The bridge between these two steps is film development—a boring necessity. There are acts of discovery, choice, arrangement and craft that take place during both steps, but it is during the first that photography differs most from the other arts.
I find that most photographers emphasize one phase or the other. Either they are at their peak during the camera-vision phase, seeking later to re-create the truth of that moment when they print, or they are at their peak during the printing phase, using the camera-captured images as so much raw material to be manipulated or combined later in the darkroom, for purposes they may never have imagined when they were shooting. Sometimes, too, the creative high-point comes with a concept formulated before the shooting (planned sequences, for example), but even so, numerous unknown variables are encountered during the camera work.