Photography has long been considered a compelling medium, capable of capturing moments in time and preserving them for posterity. Its unique characteristics, including its technical nature, documentary qualities, and unique perspective, set it apart from other art forms. Let’s delve into the intricate nature of photography, exploring its inherent qualities and the creative processes that bring it to life.
The Perception and Truth of Photography
The perception of photographic images is often conditioned by an assumption about their technical nature. Typically, the unique qualities of photography are reduced to its documentary value and truthfulness, based on the notion that photographic images are produced by a physical-chemical process without direct human intervention. This perspective suggests that photographic images possess an inherent objectivity that is unattainable in any other form of representing reality.
All the arts are based on the presence of man, in photography alone we enjoy its absence.
André Bazin
This point of view implies that “documentary nature” is an intrinsic property of photographic paper and everything it represents. It is a mystical element embedded in the photograph itself.
Every photograph, whether contemporary or vintage, implies the presence of a photographer with a camera at a particular time and place. Both the photographer and the camera lens act as witnesses to the scene, and the photograph itself serves as a document that confirms their testimony. This creates a powerful sense of presence that is often considered the basis of photography’s documentary value. Photographs allow us a glimpse into the past; they are essentially always rooted in the past and evoke feelings of nostalgia and timelessness.
As for the truthfulness of photography, it has long since learned to falsify reality and openly lie to the viewer. Today, in the age of computer tyranny, one must be very careful when speaking about the truthfulness of a photographic image. In other words, photography is documentary because the very process of taking a photograph is documentary. There are no molecules of truth in the photographic paper.
Information Overload Defines Documentary Photos
Documentarity is closely related to the amount of information captured in a photograph. In addition to the essential visual information, a plethora of secondary, unnecessary details and elements are imprinted on the film, completely unrelated to the main and only important thing the photographer was striving to capture. Sometimes there is no way to get rid of this informational “noise” and achieve conciseness in the image. In any case, it takes a lot of effort from the photographer.
However, this inherent “noise” serves as a backdrop to the primary image, enriching it with a multitude of meticulously rendered details that, in turn, contribute to the photograph’s documentary feel and its informational richness. Such an image invites careful and prolonged examination, much like a historical document.
The abundance of details allows the viewer to see with fresh eyes what often goes unnoticed. Therefore, the redundancy of information is another inherent characteristic of photography, setting it apart from man-made, painted, or drawn images.
“I do not count the hairs in the beard of a passerby or the buttons on his frock coat, and my brush should not see more than I do.”
F. Goya
Undoubtedly, the lens captures far more than the human eye, yet this is a surmountable limitation, a matter of the photographer’s skill and craftsmanship. Achieving laconicity and eliminating unnecessary emphasis are attainable goals. And perhaps, the chorus of incidental details, despite their overwhelming number, will not drown out the main voices but rather harmonize with them.
One-Eyed Photographic Vision
Central perspective in painting closely aligns with the vision of a photographic lens. Thus, photography, like painting, represents a one-eyed view, introducing a significant degree of conventionality and deviating from our binocular vision. For instance, only with one-eyed vision can we cover a distant house or even the sun in the sky with our finger.
Painting, and even more so, graphic art, are less transparent. In a painting, the canvas surface covered in brushstrokes is clearly visible. Photography, on the other hand, is not transparent to everyone; young children and animals often fail to recognize objects in photographs. This transparency, it seems, is conditioned by learning and cultural experience. It is an illusion of our perception, an illusion of the third dimension.
The higher the quality of the photographic print (sharpness, rendering of fine details, richness of halftones, and so on), the more secondary details we find in the image. So transparency is enhanced with increasing print quality and reaches its maximum in color photography. Conversely, if the image is of such poor quality – blurred, lacking fine details or halftones – that the figures and signs on it lack the authenticity of real objects, transparency is absent.
The transparency of photography (a complete illusion of real space when perceived) is an inherent quality of the medium. This is the first distinction between photography and a man-made image; it evokes a sense of its documentary nature and truthfulness.
Single-Moment Capture and Perception
Another fundamental difference between a photographic image and a painting is its singularity (single-moment capture). Everything that happens in any part of it, in the center, to the right or to the left on the periphery, necessarily happens at the same moment in time. This allowed V. Favorsky to mention at one time the unnaturalness and even falseness of photography, which makes the gaze stand still.
In the visual arts, this prohibition is lifted. The rear legs of the horse are depicted in one phase, and the front legs in another, subsequent phase of movement. And while we shift our gaze from the hind legs to the front legs, during this short time the phase of movement changes, and the horse begins to move, comes to life. The miracle of a multi-moment image arises, a synthesis of two phases of movement. In photography, this is impossible, the illusion of movement is achievable, but by other means.
Although the photographic image is instantaneous, the perception of the photograph is lengthy: the eye will go around all the nodal points of the image in turn and penetrate into the meaning. Thus, single-moment capture is not literally perceived.
Decisive Moments and Role of Chance in Photography
The human eye is designed with a very small zone of sharp vision, corresponding to an angle of view of 2-3 degrees. This rule holds true when looking at the image on the camera’s matte glass during shooting. As a result, at the most crucial moment, the photographer is simply unable to see, for instance, the expression on the face or the phase of movement of the character in the right part of the frame and simultaneously in the left; he sees either one or the other. This situation is further intensified when shooting with a panoramic camera.
“Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”
A. Cartier-Bresson
Therefore, when a great photographer talks about fractions of a second, this is perceived as beautiful words. The photographer does not see the entire frame at the last moment (and if he does, then not with his eye) and is far from always able to predict what will happen on the film.
What can I say – it is a rather offensive circumstance. It turns out that at the very moment when the photographer is simply obliged to see everything that happens within the frame, to keep track of dozens of the most diverse micro-events, he is not able to do this. In other words, unique, great photographs are born with a great deal of randomness. Is it possible? Yes, it is possible, and this is how it happens.
At the moment of shooting the photographer concentrates all his abilities, all his intuition, he literally works with his nerves and skin, but at the same time he counts on himself and on luck. Until the film is developed, the photographer does not know whether what he managed to see in the viewfinder was captured on it. The hero in the frame may blink, another may suddenly raise his hand or leg, or anything else may happen, there are a thousand unexpected things. Moreover, 999 out of a thousand “surprises” will finally ruin the frame, and one – the most desired – will significantly improve it. That’s what all hope is for! Because then on the negative there will be something that was simply impossible to imagine.
The photographer is like the cod, which lays a million eggs in order that one may be hatched.
George Bernard Shaw
Chance as a form-generating element is unthinkable in any of the classical arts, it is a specific property of photography alone. But one should not be ashamed of chance, one must make it work.
The photographer needs talent, honed intuition, the ability to foresee, to predict. After all, chance is a suddenly opened up inevitability, that helps the photographer who shoots more films per day than an amateur in a year, sometimes 20-30 rolls. What then is the skill, why does he do it? How many not just unique, but simply successful photographs will such a photographer take in a day? One or two, if he is very lucky, and sometimes – not a single one. But a few flawless shots will go to the collection after a year of work.
Ultimately, photographic masterpieces are born from a random coincidence of a great many circumstances, only one of which, according to the common formula, is the presence of the photographer at a given moment in a given place.
Analysis and Selection
Due to the specifics of photography, the photographer most often goes not from the idea to the result, but in the opposite direction – from the result to its comprehension, evaluation and analysis. “What did I get, – he asks himself, – is it good or bad? And what does it say, what does it mean, what will the viewer see in it?”
This circumstance becomes decisive in digital photography, when you can easily take several hundred pictures in one hour.
The photographer chooses twice: once when shooting, and the second time – after it, from the pictures taken. And this is his most responsible choice. Photography is more than half comprehension and selection, and a good photographer is more than half impeccable taste.
Analysis and selection are the most creative processes in the photographer’s work. It is here that his personality manifests itself, he humanizes hundreds and thousands of acts of “mechanical fixation”, choosing one of them. And this one is his brainchild, his continuation and expression.
But at the same time, the photographer deals not with nature, but with a new reality – its image in the photograph. He seeks meaning not in the depicted, but in the image, which is completely different. The methods of influencing the photographed object are limited: light, optics, the choice of the shooting point. And you can work with the image in a different way, in an artistic way. You can weaken or strengthen one or another shade of content, changing the form – rebuild tonal and linear relationships in the frame by printing, cropping, tactful computer intervention.
In some, “artistic” cases, a photographic image is much more meaningful than the depicted, it not only reveals the meaning of the event, but also interprets it.
On the other hand, how many good pictures fly into the bin for the simple reason that the photographer is simply not able to appreciate what he has done. And this applies not only to a beginner photographer, but also to an experienced photographer. It’s just that some frame on his film turns out to be much smarter than its creator. And the photographer chooses another, neighboring one, more familiar, more similar to what he has ever seen or done himself. The problem of choice is the most important and most difficult in the photographer’s work. Not everyone can handle it.
Artistic taste is needed by a photographer not only when shooting, but much more it is needed in the process of analyzing and selecting the material taken, evaluating its plastic expressiveness and the resulting meaning. This is a very difficult and lengthy, truly creative process. Sometimes it is easier to take a hundred new pictures than to understand what happened in one.
Indeed, it is very, very difficult to determine what is behind this image, how it would look in a different print, and what this other print should be, from a blind, hastily printed control print or even from a 24×36 mm contact sheet. In other words, you need to see what is not there, but could be, if there were something that is also not there. Often the selected frame has no visible differences, and the photographer’s intuition, his experience and understanding of the task decide the matter.
A person capable of such a creative process is a real artist, with his own established attitude to life, with a clear understanding of what he wants to tell people, in the name of what he shoots. And when the photographer “discovers” an unplanned frame on the film, he must be an artist here too, in order to see, appreciate and comprehend it. To take responsibility and say: “This is not a random frame, this is the truth of life.”
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
Ansel Adams
In addition, of course, it takes time to step away from the impressions that accompanied the shooting, to be able to look at the photograph objectively. The picture has already been taken and lives its own life, you have to see it through other people’s eyes. It is essential to cut the umbilical cord between the photographer and the photograph, to erase all memories.
Let us say that a genius photographer shoots as much as an average photographer, but selects with extraordinary precision. Here are some of the most important questions that every photographer must answer at some point in his development. What is better – one outstanding picture or a hundred “good”, successful ones in which, as they say, “there is something”? What is right – working (striving to perfection) on one photo or spending this time (and it is years of working) on taking hundreds or dozens of such successful, but incomplete, half-baked photos? What remains after a great photographer, how many of his photographs will be remembered?
There are many questions, each person finds the answers on their own. In any case, we can say one thing: the ability to bring work to the end is given to few. And first of all, it is a lot of work and a huge expenditure of energy.
It would seem that such natural qualities of photography as documentary, protocol, or, even more so, chance, deprive it of the right to be called a true art. Of course, this is not so, there are enough photographs in the world that amaze us not only with information, but also with the depth of content, the perfection of artistic form.
The uniqueness of photography lies in the fact that it is always a co-creation of the artist and nature, it is always a game for two. Photography can be a true art insofar as reality itself spontaneously creates certain moments of truth and beauty. The role of the photographer is to feel such a moment, comprehend it and express it in material.