Human Effort

I have been considering what makes “art”. I have only gotten as far as believing a necessary ingredient – maybe the only one – is human effort.

Random beauty

The world is a riot of random beauty. Flowers, trees, waterfalls, mountain ranges, oceans, sunsets abound. When you think about them, most of them are exceptionally beautiful in their way.

I am blessed to live in Colorado. We have all of those things above (except oceans) and more. It is fall here as I write this. The last two weekends I have been out for long drives within a few hours of my home. The fall aspen colors are great. I’ve seen waterfalls and mountains and interesting trees and even burn areas – yes, they can have a kind of beauty of their own. It is a new moon time and I have been blown away by the beauty of the night sky in dark areas of the mountains. I’m not bragging. Most of you probably live in a beautiful area if you learn to appreciate it.

Beauty like this and grand landscapes are some of the first things that come to mind for most of us when we think about going out to take pictures. How can we not take great pictures when we are surrounded by natural beauty? Well, that’s where the difference happens that changes it from a pretty picture to art.

Blank canvas

Let’s look the other direction and imagine our self a painter. We have a blank canvas in front of us. What will we put on it?

This makes it a little easier to think about creativity and art. One of the unique things about photography is that the sensor records whatever we have framed in our viewfinder. One of our challenges is to very selectively limit what we want to see. Painters must design their composition and add every element, color, and brush stroke manually. A very different skill set, but still, as I will argue, the same kind of art.

So everything that ends up on the canvas had to be consciously placed there by the artist. What the painter creates is undeniably a work of human effort.

Interpretation

Have you experienced a time when two photographers have been together at a location, but you each got very different results? How can that be? You saw the same scene in front of you but made something different out of it.

Actually, that is not only common, it is typical. It is a difference between art and reporting.

When a newspaper journalist (there are still a few of them) sees a scene or event, if they are an honest reporter, their goal is to accurately report it to their readers. They want to capture the essential information without bias, while keeping it interesting. Whether in words or still images or videos, they want their audience to have an detailed first hand account of it.

But let’s say another crew of filmmakers was there at the same time. They have no implied imperative to be factual. Their focus may be on the drama of the scene, or it’s visual impact, or how it affects people, or even how it supports their particular political bias. Is this group doing a bad job?

No. Not if they are clearly interpreting events from a subjective viewpoint. What they bring back will probably be vastly different from the newspaper reporter. It may even be difficult to believe it was the same event. By taking a loose interpretation of facts, they had more freedom to create art.

When you are out photographing, are you reporting or making art?

Two photographers

Let’s get back to those 2 photographers at the same scene. It could be that one takes a very conventional, factual approach. Implicitly he believes this landscape shot should encompass his field of vision and it should show “just what he saw”. No more. No less. The result could well be a beautiful photo that many people would love to hang on their wall.

But let’s say the other photographer takes a very different approach. Let’s say for him, a wide shot of the whole scene is not how he relates to the spirit of the place. Instead, he zooms in on a small part of the scene. Say a small cascade with fallen leaves on it. By getting low and close and using a slow shutter speed and a polarizer, he gets the motion of blurred water among the rocks with reflections of the seasonal colors. Not something you could look at and definitely know the location. But the viewer gets a feel for the place and time as expressed by the photographer.

Which is better? I can’t say. Maybe neither. Depends on their skill and vision. But one is more likely to be art.

Created

Now we come around full circle to my statement about human effort. One photograph is exactly what you would have seen if you drove to the same overlook. Some skill was required to successfully capture the image, but you know almost nothing of what the photographer was feeling about the scene.

The second image demonstrates effort by the artist to create a scene for us to see. By scanning, evaluating, focusing in, moving, they bring us to a new point of view. This photographer is trying to create something beyond a straight image anyone would have seen and taken. It has (potentially) elevated the dialog and given us a new insight. I say potentially, because it may be a failure. Still, he tried.

I am showing my biases. For me, at this point in my journey, the more interesting images are the result of effort to understand and interpret my feelings. It is not totally black & white, just a statistical prediction.

These feelings about human effort are not just my own conclusions. Are there any original thoughts left to think?

W. Eugene Smith, for instance, said

“I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.”

Guy Tal pointed out in his great book The Interior Landscape that

“Poetry” derives from a Greek word meaning “to create” or to bring something into being. “Art” derives from a Latin word referring also to items brought into being by human skill (as opposed to things occurring naturally or randomly).

So “art” and “poetry” basically mean the same thing, just from 2 different languages. Art is an act of creation that comes as a deliberate use of human skill. We bring something into being. Our art may be, as Smith said, at odds with the literal facts. I like that phrase.

Is it art?

Ah, the existential question behind all this. What is “art”? At this point, I have to come down on the side of a definite “I don’t know.” I have heard it said that “anything created as art is art.” I’m at a loss to do much better than that. I say that because I look at a fair bit of “art” and for a lot of it, I have to just scratch my head and think “Really? What were they thinking?”. So I obviously do not understand. Maybe I can’t understand.

But for this little subset of the universe I am writing about today, maybe we can make some judgments.

So, is photography art? Yes. It absolutely can be. If it is created as art, it is art. It requires artistic sensibilities to do a good job. I’m not talking about selfies.

Is a representational photo less “good” than an interpretive one? I can’t say. It varies with time and context. You do what you have to do. Make your own art and follow your own values.

I used to be a straight representational photographer. I did everything I could to capture a scene exactly and in detail. Just like it was. Over time I have morphed into someone who values interpretation more. Even trending into abstraction and occasionally surreal. For the most part, if I show you something, I want it to be interesting and fresh. Perhaps that is a natural progression with maturity, like tending to prefer drier wine as your taste gets more sophisticated. I don’t know.

Sorry to disappoint you. At this point I can only suggest you do your art and I will do mine and let’s not judge each other. If we are both happy with what we are doing, what else matters? And that is part of the beauty of it all. I used to be an engineer. One thing I appreciate as an artist is the much higher level of ambiguity. That is also a sign of maturity.