IC w2 Typically photographic

The idea that a photo represents reality is interesting and offers all kinds of possibilities to play with that perception. To mislead the viewer.

Today I went to Art Rotterdam and saw drawings that were so realistic that I had to look twice to see that they were not photographs. I also saw the work of Hiroshi Nomura that looked very realistic. In the Doppelopment series (see image) he has two daughters in each photo. In reality, he only has one daughter who posed twice for each image, but because he uses photography, it becomes more realistic as a painting would have done. It is about the story that you like to tell and use the medium that helps you tell the best. 

Regarding my own work. I am not sure if I can still call the end result photography because I use the data from the photo to create a new image that no longer represents any form of reality. So apparently, representing a form of reality is for me a criteria for calling an image photographic or not.

The lines that you see in this photo are the result of creating a 3d object based on the contrast in the photo; a kind of trace that represents the transition from one color to the other. By coloring sections in, the traces become more visible.

Is photography art?

Susan Sontag writes in "on photography": "..the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although photography generates works that can be called art – it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure -- photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made. Out of language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac’s Paris. Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget’s Paris".

I agree with Sontag that photography can be a form, but it is not so automatically. Just as well that everything I draw is certainly not art because I am not good at it. Certain craftsmanship and intention, symbolism, iconism or story must be present. A self-awareness in the choice of moment, depth of field, frame, composition, point of view, movement aspects and other reason to take that photo exactly at that moment.

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Source

• NOMURA, Hiroshi. 2017. Doppelopment series and book. https://www.shashasha.co/en/book/doppelopment [accessed 8 February 2020]

• SNYDER, Joel and Neil Walsh ALLEN. 1975. Photography, Vision and Prepresentation. Critical Inquiry.

• SONTAG, Susanne. 2019. Over fotografie. 1ste edn. De Arbeiderspers. [e-pub]