Is photography art? Should we even care? What is art, anyway?
But first: Now that the summer is slowly coming to an end, I hope you have been able to enjoy this life-endorsing season. As for myself, I have been fortunate enough to venture out on many outdoor trips—in mountains, in forests as well as on the sea—and I have read a lot.
It’s the latter I want to write about in this blog post—or what it has lead to. Among other texts, I have read lots of articles, debates, talks and comments from old masters of photography. As so, an address delivered by Paul Strand at the Clarence White School of Photography in 1923 has dramatically changed the way I see myself as a photographer, my view on art and maybe even my photography (though the latter remains to see, I guess) .
That may seem as quite the exaggerated statement, but hear—or read—me out.
Paul Strand was a trend-setting, American photographer in the beginning of the previous century. According to Wikipedia, he, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form at the time. As to this day, he is still one of the most recognized artists in the pantheon of photographers. However, he might just have disagreed with this very characterization himself. Or not cared.
Photography has always been a stepdaughter of art. As much as it is recognized as one of many art forms today, it’s still not fully on line with the classic arts such as painting, music, sculpturing, etc. Work by the old masters of photography, such as Paul Strand, are sought after and sold at extremely high prices on auction—but they are still far from what the old masters of the classical disciplines—such as Picasso and Miró, contemporaries of Strand—achieve.
As for myself, as a photojournalist and a documentary photographer, I have always been reluctant to call myself an artist. It just seemed too pretentious. The last many years, though, I have slowly changed my perception and gradually come to terms with myself doing work that is more artistic. In the end, it comes down to a desire to create more personal work—work that could be called art photography.
Now then, in from the past, comes Paul Strand.
In the aforementioned address, he talks to the students of photography (and a hundred years later to me) about what is required to become a photographer: “It involves, first and foremost, a thorough respect and understanding for the particular materials with which he or she is impelled to work, and a degree of mastery over them, which is craftsmanship. And secondly, that indefinable something, the living element which fuses with craftsmanship, the element which relates the product to life and must therefore be the result of a profound feeling and experience of life.”
While craftsmanship is relatively easy to learn, this indefinable something, according to Strand, can’t be taught or given, but develops within yourself by what he calls a free way of living. By that, he means free of conventions, free of other opinions, free of already existing ideas, and not the least free from whatever art is defined as, and, more to the point, free from wanting to become an artist. What is art anyway? Nobody can precisely define it and as it has gotten used in an ever broader meaning, it has at the same time lost its meaning.
“This wanting to be what may truthfully be called an artist, is the last thing in the world to worry about. You either are the thing or you are not.”
Strand has but no respect for the so-called art photographers of the time. At the beginning of the 19th century, pictorialism was the fashionable style. For Strand, this way of making photographs was dishonest, trying to turn photography into something, which it is not, giving it a painterly feeling. He saw it as means to be accepted in what he calls the polite society of artists. These “artists” were doing photography in lack of enough talent to become good painters.
He wants the future photographers he is talking to, to be free, as described above. They should photograph with honesty, honest to themselves. He encourages them to photograph and experiment on their own accord, free from whatever has been or will be installed in them from previous photographers, schools and the future. More than anything, he urges them to forget about art.
“If you really want to paint, then do not photograph, except as you may want to amuse yourself along of the rest of Mr. Eastman’s customers [Eastman was Kodak’s founder]. Photography is not a short cut to painting, being an artist, or anything else.”
Photographers should not try to “make” art, but rather capture good photographs. In doing so, “there are no short cuts, no formulae, no rules, except those of your own living.”
Be as good a photographer as possible, forget being an artist. That is in essence Paul Strand’s message.
He was not alone in this assessment. The same year Edward Weston, another of the modernist photographers of the 19th century, in an interview in New York Times said something alike: “I don’t care about making photography an art. I want to take good photographs. I’d like to know who first got this idea in his head that dreaminess and mist is art. Take things as they are; take good photographs and the art will take care of itself.”
That’s me now. I am a photographer—period. Like a writer is a writer, a painter is a painter, a composer is a composer. Why care about the artist, anyway?
Would you like to get motivating thoughts related to the act of photographing? Every once a month I write Sideways—nuggets of inspiration on photography. Sign up to receive Sideways in your email.
Photo Workshops and Tours in 2023
These are the photo workshops I and Blue Hour Photo Workshops plan for this year.
”Along the Streets of Prague”—five days in the beautiful city of Prague, The Czech Republic. This is a jewel in the middle of Europe with its historical, cultural and human melting pot. September 7th to 10th 2023.
”Photo Tour in Granada”—a week in Nicaragua for the adventures. We will explore the colonial city and its extraordinary countryside. November 5th to 15th 2023.
”On the Tracks of Che Guevara”—ten days in eastern Bolivia. This is a great opportunity to discover one of the most beautiful countries in South America. October 23rd to 31st 2023.
Are you interested in developing your photographic skills? Do you like to travel? Do you want to make your photos tell a story in a much stronger vocabulary? Find your own expression? Develop your vision and become more creative? Any of these workshops would take your photography to the next level. I promise you, you will be in for an amazing experience. Click any of the links for more info.
In Flow with Otto 