Bruce Barnbaum - The Art of Photography - An Approach to Personal Expression

We can begin with these definitions to see where photography fits into the world of art, and to explore some starting points for producing photographs that are worthy of the title “fine art”. Of course, the preceding chapters have all been devoted to this pursuit: We began by looking into ourselves to see what interests us and how we want to present those interests to others. Then we looked into the concept of composition, the elements of composition, and ways of composing a photograph to strengthen its message. Then we delved into the photographic controls that make compositional choices possible.

Photography as Fine Art

Had I spent more time analyzing the Bodie photographs from the perspective of the initial thoughts in the book (i.e., what they meant to me, and how I wanted to convey my thoughts) I would have had a clue to their shortcomings, for the truth was that I had little interest in Bodie beyond its superficial textures, lines, and forms. In other words, Bodie didn’t mean very much to me. I was never much interested in its tawdry history, nor did I see deep meaning in its textures and forms. Instead, I was photographing Bodie and analyzing my images purely from the compositional aspect, and they seemed pleasing from that point of view.

Alone or together, good composition and technical prowess don’t imply fine art. A great number of photographers can produce exquisite photographs that say nothing and inspire nobody. There is an abundance of photographs that are technically perfect but devoid of meaning. As Ansel Adams once said, “There is nothing more useless than a sharp photograph of a fuzzy concept.” The painter Robert Henri said to his students, “I do not want to see how skillful you are—I am not interested in your skill. What do you get out of nature? Why did you paint this subject? What is life to you? What reasons and what principles have you found? What are your deductions? What projections have you made? What excitement, what pleasure do you get out of it? Your skill is the thing that least interests me.”

Although photography can stand on its own merits as an art form, let’s consider it not in isolation, but in relation to other arts. Each art form is unique both in the message it presents and in its manner of presentation. Each art form exerts influence on the others. In particular, photography has had an immense—almost traumatic—influence on painting, but the repercussions of this influence have also been hard on photography. These repercussions have been almost entirely overlooked or ignored by art and photography historians alike. I feel that they are crucially important, and I shall delve into them.

Photography and Painting—Their Mutual Influence

Until photography came into widespread use in the mid-1800s, painting was largely representational—realistic, to use the definition above. Most fine paintings depicted people or scenes that were either realistic or idealistic, which means that real people were made to appear heroic for purposes of enhanced stature, or that scenes were aggrandized beyond reality for much the same reason. Yet even those subjects were meant to be clearly identifiable, albeit exaggerated. Furthermore, even when subject matter was aggrandized or romanticized, the result was basically representational.

But with the spread of photography during the 1850s and ’60s, all that changed. Photography was better than painting at depicting reality; it was simply more accurate. Only the quality of the lens limited its accuracy. Painting, as it evolved over thousands of years, was traumatized. By the 1870s, photography was making a huge impact on the world. Painting responded to this challenge by going through a sequence of well-known movements. Impressionism, postimpressionism, pointillism, fauvism, dadaism, surrealism, cubism, and others all followed one another (or occurred simultaneously) in an effort to anchor painting as an art once again. This effort has continued with other movements like modernism, abstract expressionism, postmodernism, Campbell’s soup-canism, pop art, op art, and perhaps in the future, mom-and-pop art.

But as painting changed drastically, primarily in response to photography, criticism changed along with it, and so did the definition of art. Each of the well-known movements in painting was roundly disparaged at its inception, but then was quickly incorporated into the fabric of art. As time went on, representational painting began to lose its significance as an art form. We can compare Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington, which has always been considered a work of reasonable artistic merit, with any painting of a recent president that is nothing more than another in a series of presidential paintings. It seems apparent that the great portraits of the masters—Rembrandt, Goya, Gainsborough, Reynolds, etc.—would be dismissed if done today because they are too representational, too real. By the same token, photography’s greatest asset, its visual accuracy—its innate realism—is also hard hit by this critical consensus. As photography forced painting to change, painting and criticism have forced the art world to change, and photography must respond to that change or be excluded from the world of art.

The inherent realism of photography is, in fact, somewhat of an obstacle to its acceptance as an art form in today’s milieu, even though that aspect makes its message so powerful. A compounding factor to this problem is the universal usage of photography: everybody has a camera, therefore everybody is a photographer, but surely everybody is not an artist . There is the widespread feeling that photography is easy, as in Kodak’s original advertising slogan: “You snap the shutter, we do the rest.”

The English cathedrals struck me overwhelmingly as examples of what humanity can produce at its best. This image is an attempt at an ethereal “stairway to heaven” with no blacks or dark grays .

Figure 15-4. Stairway, Wells Cathedral

The preceding chapters indicate that expressive photography is not that easy after all. It requires immense effort—physical, emotional, and mental. But for all that effort, if the final image is to qualify as art, it must go beyond documentary realism. Even if a photograph stays within the realm of realism, it can have artistic merit if it’s endowed with a leap of imagination on the part of the photographer.

The image must have something that carries it beyond pure documentation. Perhaps there’s a heightened sensitivity—something deeply felt and revealed that offers the viewer deeper insights and understanding. Perhaps there’s a quality of mystery—something left unanswered that requires the viewer to investigate the print and think about it further. Or maybe there’s a surprise—something unexpected that leaves the viewer in wonder and amazement. Perhaps there’s a heightened sense of drama or grandeur or calm. Whatever the quality, it must be more than a scene, a person, or a thing.

My Bodie photographs failed because they were photographs of things—weathered wood, peeling wallpaper, partially collapsed structures, bubbled windows, etc. They were well done, but they had no leap of imagination. Though I was fascinated by Bodie, the fascination was superficial and my photographs had no real base from which to leap. I should note that beginning in 2000, I began revisiting Bodie and producing new images that I feel are far more interesting and insightful than those produced earlier. Perhaps I have begun to see and feel Bodie differently.

The photographs I produced in the English cathedrals are different from my Bodie efforts. They, too, are pure realism: they are visually accurate (perhaps with slight aggrandizement through lens choices, view, and camera movements), and they were created with a conscious attempt to avoid any form of abstraction. In cathedral after cathedral, I was struck by three aspects of the architecture: the musical interaction of light and forms; the mathematical feeling of infinity created by repeated columns, vaults, and arches; and the overwhelming grandeur. As my gaze ran up the columns into the arches and vaulting overhead, I saw music unfolding before my eyes. I felt awed and uplifted by the magnificent forms. I attempted to depict both aspects through my photography. I felt something beyond just good architecture and wonderful craftsmanship. Those elements added up to more in my mind; Bodie’s elements never did (Figure 15-4).