I am not a gardener. (Imagine trying to do that while living a mobile life.) But recently Sylvia Simpson gave me a magazine called "Organic Gardening." Within its covers is an article about making a photograph that is not just a picture, but true art. Since I like photography, though I am admittedly as amateur as they come, I found the article insightful. The writer makes the great point that true artistic photography portrays reality while reflecting the photographer's nature, using our culture's current fascination with computerized communication as the archetype of what is deeply personal and real.
"The artful photograph isn't a post-production trick in Photoshop or a clever manipulation that is an end in itself; it is at once deeply personal and universal. Because we live in a time where real experience has often been superceded by the image, and much of our understanding of life comes through a virtual filter, making the photograph that is not a counterfeit or borrowed idea is a significant challenge.
We live according to images in a way that was never possible before. Digital and social media and the Internet saturate us with such a high-def idea of life that that personal has become almost banal. If an image needs to succeed as art, it needs to layer the known with the unknowable, the material with the spiritual. It must reflect reality while at the same time transforming it beyond its literal prototype, so that the artist's vision and the real scene are both reflected in the image."
"The Photo Graphic Garden", Matthew Benson, Organic Gardening, Feb/Mar 2012, pages 36-42
No comments:
Post a Comment