Photography v painting. That hoary old argument*. Naturally enough, photography wins, with hands tied behind its back. The density of detail, that magical documenting of evidence – today was fine, there was no wind, the sun was brilliant, the shadows were dark, she was smiling etc. (We have to trust that no photoshop was applied … a big if nowadays.) Yes, okay, photography wins. Exceptbutmaybe … not.
What everyone knows – and this knowledge is refreshed everyday – is that the reproduced photographic image often takes on a kind of invisibility. We are assailed by those images from the breakfast newspaper or the first click of our morning web travels. And leaving the house, that assailing never lets up. We have learnt to look past most of it; we ignore it defensively. That’s one thing.
A drawing – especially a bad one or a good one (but maybe not one that’s mediocre), stops you and makes you look. That’s literally natural – it’s just that we have an atavistic relationship to the handmade we do not with machined stuff.
When I was up at Carnarvon Gorge in Qld a couple of weeks ago, my little camera was fully employed, recording lots of glimpses. What it couldn’t do was to make a single image that would provide some kind of comprehensive sense of being there. Almost no photos do that – what photos do is give you a good picture of the place (though not necessarily accurate, as we are often disappointed to find).
A photo flattens spaces, or pushes it back in a perspective that isn’t much like how your eye sees. A good picture of a place – ie what you see through a viewfinder – is not the same as a picture that gives you an idea of what being there might be like. Now, this argument is bound to end up as mud wrestling with words, so I’m going to attempt a pictorial demonstration of the point.
For the sake of travelling convenience I had taken an A4 pad, and a little “field box” of watercolours. There was no time to do anything while walking the Gorge so it wasn’t till we got back to Rockhampton that I could spend a couple of days making the picture below – instead of, say, a 1/15th of a second camera exposure (just to point up the difference).
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The comparison test:
There’s no claim of great artistic merit for this handmade; I’m not such great friends with watercolour. But I expect it’s good enough to demonstrate the qualities of an imaginative reconstruction of a landscape, of how a single handmade image – and it’s not a realist painting – may have an advantage over a single photograph.
So here are representations of Carnarvon Gorge, by a number of photographs, compared to a single painting.
(Acknowledging that Carnarvon Gorge, or any landscape, is or can be made up of a variety of spaces.)
The painting is 297mm wide by 1.26m deep.
The photos were shot on a current version compact digital camera. (And being photos they have no original scale.)
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The photos:
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The painting:
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* An argument initiated, rehearsed and reiterated by
Walter Benjamin: The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction
Susan Sontag: On Photography
John Berger : The Uses of Photography
Geoff Dyer: The Ongoing Moment
David Hockney: Hockney on photography: conversations with Paul Joyce
‘Photography is crumbling.’ – D. Hockney
18 Comments
the painting hands down. makes me want to be hand fed grapes.
What a wonderful example of the value of the painted word when compared with your little photographs – in terms of illustrating the massive chasm of Carnavon Gorge.
The exception is a series of overlapping photographs printed using your printers panorama feature. That works wonderfully well as of course you already know.
But then I’m not trying to sell either paintings or photographs – and haven’t read any of the arguments listed above.
Thank you for the visual exercise,
JC
Photography Wars.
(1) On why old-fashioned hand jobs might still be the victor over technology – or stlll keep their hand in. Like a certain brand of German beer, painting gets to the parts its new competitors cannot reach. A range of institutions and enterprises – accident units in hospitals, law courts, polar expeditions, war zones – are still at least partly dependent on painters, for the scientific record as much as for interpretation and atmosphere.
(2) Regarding David Hockney and the sacked Mirror editor: historically, much war zone photography (certainly stills) were staged – including some of the best-known ‘iconic’ shots. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are ‘hoaxes’ any more than they are art. For an excellent study of this issue, see Melbourne-born author, Caroline Brothers’ book War and Photography (1997). This is one of a handful of books that Susan Sontag acknowledges as changing her mind on photography (or helping to refine it) in her Regarding the Pain of Others.
– Ian Britain
Perhaps you are a good painter, but a poor photographer?
I think that the best landscape photographers attempt to get across the emotional aspect of what they are seeing. That’s not easy, given that you are stuck with what you are given on the day. With painting, however, you can of course use artistic licence to try to get the same effect, so could one argue that it takes less talent?
I have just been to the American Impressionist and Realist exhibition at the Qld Art Gallery. I was stunned by the beauty and powerful effect of the techniques used of subjects only known to me through film and photography. Our knowledge of the universal aspects of landscapes such as how light falls through leafless trees to convey season – these details so important, and so skilled to achieve. I don’t know that photographs of these subjects would offer the same reaction in me, as your examples show, they are clinical. Painting is as much about the painter as it is the subject – viewing is an experience of an interpretive moment in time. Good photography is different.
From a photographer’s point of view, compositionally, your digital images are certainly reasonably competent but capturing them by using a “current compact digital” camera (handheld I notice) is hardly a fair comparison with your watercolour skill. Your mention of a digital capture taking 1/15th of a second belittles the time, patience, technical skill, eye and luck (being in the right place at the right time) of a good landscape photographer in capturing a single exposure. A single capture by a landscape photography can take hours. Having said all that, a good landscape photograph can certainly stand on its own artistically, but I think it’s disingeneous to compare these two disciplines.
I like your watercolour.
Yes, how can anyone compare that which is different? Unless it is to convince someone of what you believe.
Thanks for all the interesting remarks.
As Jon Hunt suggests, and Jeremy Davis implies, it is perhaps my lack of skill in photography that makes it a disingenuous comparison.
But I’d suggest that maybe my watercolour skills are about the same standard in painting as taking a picture with a digital compact…
I should say that I have great respect for photographers … why, some of my best friends are photographers, as they say. But true.
And it is the case that someone like Ansel Adams would have taken days to set up a spectacular shot like this. Adams worked a lot harder than your average holiday snapper, of course, but then he also had this little thing called Talent. As he said, ‘In my mind’s eye, I visualize how a particular… sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.’
Whether the experiment of comparing the snaps I took with the picture I made is a reasonable one, is the question. A photograph will always provide kinds of information that a handmade picture cannot, even if it is an eye-popping self-portrait like this one of Lucien Freud. I just wanted to see if anyone else thought the reverse also applied – that a painting can impart other kinds of resonant information that a photo cannot. And I think it can – and it has to do with not being contrained by the limitation of a viewfinder viewpoint.
It’s interesting to consider how we look – inside of 4 or 5 seconds we might have viewed a scene from a dozen different angles and focused on both the distant background as well as the immediate foreground. A camera can only settle on the one spot – unless we do a David Hockney joiner like this of Pearblossom Highway, an amazing picture constructed by what Hockney calls “drawing with a camera.”
And that is what a handmade composition can do – apart from the not inconsiderable intangible qualities imparted by the materiality of the paper texture and paint surfaces, a painting is also an invention, a reconstruction – a reconstitution of all that was before the eye – an attempt to recognise and emphasise all the different aspects that made the scene come together in the mind (rather like what Adams said above). Instead of drawing with a camera, it is … It is drawing with a paintbrush!
Maybe this is the point I’m trying to get to: the simple, unretouched straight shot with a camera which we are all so accustomed to believing as the truth, is a ruse. We are used to thinking of photographs as “realist” documents, when they are only “camera viewpoint” documents. The world looks very different through an actual human eye (and who knows how it looks to an eagle?) – but we are so immersed by photography that we may have surrended the idea of visual reality to the photo.
Like the tourist in a hurry we see the scenes before us through the camera. But … if we sat down and told the story of where we had been and what we had seen, it might be that the word picture we draw is a much more accurate telling of what we had experienced; it takes work to see something properly. And that is what the camera has saved us from – like a time-saving device, the camera is now doing our looking for us.
I think you’re inventing a conflict where none exists. Does anyone out there really think any art-form completely supersedes any other? If they do, I dare say they are beyond your help. Does anyone really think a photo has an inherent “truth”? Certainly no-one who’s browsed a real-estate catalogue then visited the homes in-person.
That being said, I look forward to your insights on who’d win a fight between a violin and a flute (my money’s on the flute).
Hmm. I’m torn. I’m inclined to think violin, but I’m wavering.
Adams is my hero. If I may take this opportunity, as an amateur photographer, to show you some of my landscape snaps….
http://www.flindersimages.com.au/Adnyamathanha_Yarta_-_Images_of_the_Flinders_Ranges/Images.html
Jon, lovely images!
I particularly like the black and whites: A typical hill just off Blinman Road, Hill on Bunyeroo Road and Saltbush near Saltia, Port Augusta.
Thank you. I’m no Adams though. It seems to be more trial and error!
Ah, trial and error.
That’s another term for work.
Jon your photos are great – beautiful compositions. The Adams is amazing too. I checked out the Hockneys as well, very interesting!
Thank you
Thank you all. But I just want to comment that it is interesting that, and it appears that It seems that with anything arty it is very difficult to know how good your work is. I’ve got absolutely no idea whether it is rubbish or not, until someone else sees it.
Thank you all. But I just want to comment that it seems that with anything arty it is very difficult to know how good your work is. I’ve got absolutely no idea whether it is rubbish or not, until someone else sees it.