Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson
I've recently became very interested in taking pictures for my blog. It's so interesting changing filters and composing a frame. I feel just like Austin Powers.
The other day while I was taking some pictures around my house, I saw my sister sketching. I couldn't help comparing paintings and photographs.
To me, the deal with cameras is that they only allow you to represent what they see themselves. If you go to Europe and you hang around their museums you're pretty much going to see paintings portraying three things: religious themes (Christian or Greek/Roman), landscapes and portraits.
Through painting it was possible to represent abstract and invisible things or even past events. With cameras we can only represent what is already there. What I'm trying to say is: you can't take a picture of the Annunciation.
In the late 1800's - when cameras were becoming more popular - painters were kind of lost because suddenly "paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth".*
That's not completely true. Sure, portraits and landscape photographs are more lifelike than paintings - but that doesn't mean they're better. Cameras are only capable of portraying reality to a certain extent. Actually, the only thing they are able to portray is reality. Supernatural, imaginative, religious entities cannot be represented through photographs.
The answer artists found was to put their own subjectivity and emotions in their paintings. That was the solution presented by the Impressionists.
The Japanese Bridge by Claude Monet, 1899
Boy, would I be angry if I lived in this time. I'd be screaming out: "Don't be fooled by the machine! Now, you have to practice your skill more than ever! Monet, give me back that camera." Then, I'd take Monet's camera, toss it into his little pond and run.**
Anyway, the advent of cameras changed the art world forever and I think the results show us that the change was not necessarily a good one.
Any thoughts? Can we consider photography art?
Images via 1, 2, 3
* Wikipedia article on Impressionism
** I once went to an exhibit about Impressionism and I remember that it said Monet and other artists used photographs as a basis for their paintings. I tried looking that information up, but, seriously, I couldn't find it anywhere.
Images via 1, 2, 3
* Wikipedia article on Impressionism
** I once went to an exhibit about Impressionism and I remember that it said Monet and other artists used photographs as a basis for their paintings. I tried looking that information up, but, seriously, I couldn't find it anywhere.