Photography vs Art (painting, sketching, drawing etc)

Another POTN member posted this quote in another thread.. For me, this hits the nail right on the head..


"Photography is a medium of formidable contradictions. It is both ridiculously easy and almost impossibly difficult. It is easy because its technical rudiments can readily be mastered by anyone with a few simple instructions. It is difficult because, while the artist working in any other medium begins with a blank surface and gradually brings his conception into being, the photographer is the only imagemaker who begins with the picture completed.His emotions, his knowledge, and his native talent are brought into focus and fixed beyond recall the moment the shutter of his camera has closed."
- Edward Steichen

What do you think? Wrong or right?

Its absolutely correct. In fact if you study the history of photography in the early days in the mid/late 1800s the rage was pictorial photography which was a style that tried to imitate painting of the time which was impressionism. For photography to be taken seriously by the art world it had to show what it does best as an art form and not imitate another already established two dimensional art form, painting. It had to move beyond that and be what it is and do what it does best.

This movement started in the early part of the 20th century and was called straight photography and really picked up steam when Steichen, Stieglitz, Strand, Weston and then Adams, Cunningham came along. It was only then when photography quit imitating and started showing what it can do that no other art form can do that it was taken seriously and this gave the path to all the great documentary photographers of the 1930s as well as the great landscape photographers. So think about this when someone says one of your photographs looks like a painting. I've never considered that a compliment.

"The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art; but granted that it is an art, reliance should be placed unreservedly upon those possibilities, that they may be made to yield the fullest results." - Alfred Stieglitz

"A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term - selectivity. To define selection, one may say that it should be focussed on the kind of subject matter which hits you hard with its impact and excites your imagination to the extent that you are forced to take it. Pictures are wasted unless the motive power which impelled you to action is strong and stirring." - Berenice Abbott

"... the art of photography appears as strong and vital – and purposeful – as any other creative medium, and stands cleanly on its own feet."-Ansel Adams

"Of all forms of expression, photography is the only one which seizes the instant in its flight." - Henri Cartier-Bresson

So it shouldn't be VS because they are very different art forms as all of these great photographers all realized that and helped push photography in a direction that helped it become an art form.

It's interesting that he leaves out the darkroom as part of the creative process.

Sure, I agree that the challenge is the capture of the image, and obviously that's set some people on a "pedestal" while most of us are milling with the masses! But we all gotta start somewhere! I see some people here who are new to the "craft", but seem to have a real eye for the image, and it's pretty cool to see.

My ex's grandmother is a pretty good painter. I ran into her recently and she asked what I had been up to and photography worked it's way into the conversation. She remarked about how easy photography is because anyone can press a button, and she is 100% correct. My cat can take a photo and technically that's all a photographer is. Someone that takes photos. There's no magic skill level that dictates when one can earn that title. It is what it is.

An artist, on the other hand, is a completely different animal altogether. Seeing the unseen, finding order in chaos, bringing lifeless things to life...that's what it's all about.

That quote is dead on. It's actually an easy art, but the hard part is the vision and vision is the very meat of it.

alabama1980 wrote in post #12173886
My ex's grandmother is a pretty good painter. I ran into her recently and she asked what I had been up to and photography worked it's way into the conversation. She remarked about how easy photography is because anyone can press a button, and she is 100% correct. My cat can take a photo and technically that's all a photographer is. Someone that takes photos. There's no magic skill level that dictates when one can earn that title. It is what it is.

An artist, on the other hand, is a completely different animal altogether. Seeing the unseen, finding order in chaos, bringing lifeless things to life...that's what it's all about.

That quote is dead on. It's actually an easy art, but the hard part is the vision and vision is the very meat of it.

Hey Andy,, thanks for your reply

I've just got back from being out and gave the quote a bit of thought.

"It is difficult because, while the artist working in any other medium begins with a blank surface and gradually brings his conception into being, the photographer is the only imagemaker who begins with the picture completed".

I thought about this.. What about the still life photographer.. Wouldn't he/she start with a blank canvas?? Whereby each element is arranged in a certain way to highlight its importance and lit accordingly. Also the studio photographer where the lighting is set to give a mood.

Food for thought.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #12173391
Its absolutely correct. In fact if you study the history of photography in the early days in the mid/late 1800s the rage was pictorial photography which was a style that tried to imitate painting of the time which was impressionism. For photography to be taken seriously by the art world it had to show what it does best as an art form and not imitate another already established two dimensional art form, painting. It had to move beyond that and be what it is and do what it does best.

This movement started in the early part of the 20th century and was called straight photography and really picked up steam when Steichen, Stieglitz, Strand, Weston and then Adams, Cunningham came along. It was only then when photography quit imitating and started showing what it can do that no other art form can do that it was taken seriously and this gave the path to all the great documentary photographers of the 1930s as well as the great landscape photographers. So think about this when someone says one of your photographs looks like a painting. I've never considered that a compliment.

All very true, except for one small detail: yogestee's quote was indeed from Steichen, but Steichen was the darling, champion and culmination of the Pictoralist school which had started in England with Emerson, spread to Europe with the Vienna Circle and was brought to America by Stieglitz and others. Steichen was Stieglitz's greatest student in that period. Pictorialism sought to imitate painting, especially Impressionism and its favorite tool was blur, controlled and intentional defocus. The photograph, like a painting, was intended to give an impression of reality that could be the vehicle for an emotional response, rather than a dry and literal portrayal. It was when Stieglitz broke with Steichen and rejected his Pictorialism that American "straight" photography was born, or more accurately reborn.

tzalman wrote in post #12174334
All very true, except for one small detail: yogestee's quote was indeed from Steichen, but Steichen was the darling, champion and culmination of the Pictoralist school which had started in England with Emerson, spread to Europe with the Vienna Circle and was brought to America by Stieglitz and others. Steichen was Stieglitz's greatest student in that period. Pictorialism sought to imitate painting, especially Impressionism and its favorite tool was blur, controlled and intentional defocus. The photograph, like a painting, was intended to give an impression of reality that could be the vehicle for an emotional response, rather than a dry and literal portrayal. It was when Stieglitz broke with Steichen and rejected his Pictorialism that American "straight" photography was born, or more accurately reborn.

Steichen also changed his pictorial ways as the straight movement caught on see the photo of Greta Garbo 1928 and the portrait of Paul Robeson 1933. A lot of Stieglitz and Steichen falling out was over WWI and there differing political views. Stieglitz was a pictorial photographer also but was on of the first to realize that without photography finding its true voice thus stop mimicking another art form it would never be taken seriously.

alabama1980 wrote in post #12173886
My ex's grandmother is a pretty good painter. I ran into her recently and she asked what I had been up to and photography worked it's way into the conversation. She remarked about how easy photography is because anyone can press a button, and she is 100% correct. My cat can take a photo and technically that's all a photographer is. Someone that takes photos. There's no magic skill level that dictates when one can earn that title. It is what it is.

An artist, on the other hand, is a completely different animal altogether. Seeing the unseen, finding order in chaos, bringing lifeless things to life...that's what it's all about.

That quote is dead on. It's actually an easy art, but the hard part is the vision and vision is the very meat of it.

The most difficult part of being a great photographer is learning to see. Like Steichen said almost a century ago still holds true today.

A little sump'm from Stieglitz
"I am not a painter, nor an artist. Therefore I can see straight, and that may be my undoing." - Alfred Stieglitz

"The medium of photography can record not only what the eyes see, but that which the mind's eye sees as well. The camera is not only an extension of the eye, but of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, faster than the eye. It can see by invisible light. It can see in the past, present, and future. Instead of using the camera only to reproduce objects, I wanted to use it to make what is invisible to the eye, visible." - Wynn Bullock

"To take photographs means to recognize -- simultaneously and within a fraction of a second -- both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis." - Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time. We play with subjects that disappear; and when they’re gone, it’s impossible to bring them back to life. We can’t alter our subject afterward.... Writers can reflect before they put words on paper.... As photographers, we don’t have the luxury of this reflective time....We can’t redo our shoot once we’re back at the hotel. Our job consists of observing reality with help of our camera (which serves as a kind of sketchbook), of fixing reality in a moment, but not manipulating it, neither during the shoot nor in the darkroom later on. These types of manipulation are always noticed by anyone with a good eye." - Henri Cartier-Bresson

Being able to see is the key. It takes years to learn to see photographically. To see when the light is right, when the elements come together to make a photograph, what to leave in and also as important what to leave out.

"The camera machine cannot evade the objects which are in front of it. When the photographer selects this movement, the light, the objects, he must be true to them. If he includes in his space a strip of grass, it must be felt as the living differentiated thing it is and so recorded. It must take its proper but no less important place as a shape and a texture in relationship to the mountain tree or what not, which are included." - Paul Strand

"It's just seeing - at least the photography I care about. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Anyone can learn how to develop. It's how you organize what you see into a picture." - Elliott Erwitt

alabama1980 wrote in post #12173886
An artist, on the other hand, is a completely different animal altogether. Seeing the unseen, finding order in chaos, bringing lifeless things to life...that's what it's all about.

Except there are many painters who paint directly from photographs they take or from what they see right in front of them with the goal of trying to exactly replicate what their eyes see.

Painters that create artwork that their mind makes up are a different breed. Bob Ross is one that can create a beautiful scene from a blank canvas in just an hour or 2.

Photographers can be artists or photojournalists. Recording exactly what their eyes see without any consideration of artistry or they can bring out visions that most will never see. And some photographers make their images positioning objects, posing people, fine tuning the lighting to make what's in the image a creation of their own - certainly not just pressing a button! Kids with a camera press a button and get a picture but they won't get results with any degree of attractive or thought provoking artistry!

HappySnapper90 wrote in post #12179378
Except there are many painters who paint directly from photographs they take or from what they see right in front of them with the goal of trying to exactly replicate what their eyes see.

Just like this guy.. Very clever..

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photography vs art?

no no no..

photography IS art.

alt4852 wrote in post #12179757
photography vs art?

no no no..

photography IS art.

Good point, I suppose it would be more appropriate to simply refer to it as a medium as opposed to being individual apart from "art".

That said, I do think the op's quote is certainly an interesting and at least in large part valid viewpoint. I am quite a noob in terms of "photography" but come from a cg artist background (traditional stuff too back in my pup days), and can state in complete confidence, that photography is infinitely less laborious than creating something from nothing. BUT, there in lies the challenge. Other mediums grant the artist far more freedom to do as they wish. Sure, they may pour 200 hours into creating a single image, but they are free to manipulate it in an way they wish. A photographer must take a pre-existing set of circumstances and turn it into something beyond itself with that fixed foundation, which I think could be much more challenging. The texture and lighting of that mountain side is awesome but you just can't seem to pull a worthwhile composition out of it........suck to be a photographer says the painter.

So yes, personally I would totally agree that photography is a bit of a paradox in that sense. It's easy, but not...and resides at the corner of 1st and 1st.

^^^^^^

Great reply supaspoon

alabama1980 wrote in post #12173886
My ex's grandmother is a pretty good painter. I ran into her recently and she asked what I had been up to and photography worked it's way into the conversation. She remarked about how easy photography is because anyone can press a button, and she is 100% correct. My cat can take a photo and technically that's all a photographer is. Someone that takes photos. There's no magic skill level that dictates when one can earn that title. It is what it is.

Being a photographer is easy because you just click a button. Being a painter is easy because you just throw some paint on a canvas. Being a sculptor is easy because...

As for your cat being able to click a shutter button: http://www.amazon.com …TF8&qid=1302230​953&sr=8-1

This defines good photography but as a definition of "art" it is very, very narrow.