“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera”
-Dorothea Lange
As a tool of artistic creation, the camera weaves the visual vocabulary, intentions, and insights of the artist with the immediacy of the continuum of time. Photography as a medium for artistic expression requires not only the traditional visual elements of line, form, color, light, composition, and expression, but also the sense of harmony with “the moment”. A drawing or painting may be created and refined in a suspension of time, dependent only upon the artists vision. Photographic works of art are resolved largely in an instant, as all of the elements of technique, expression, and intent converge and harmonize at the moment the shutter is released, creating the starting point for the artistic process. “There is an intimate provenance to the art of photography that ties the artist, his vision, and expression directly to both time and place.”
Photography, as a distinct artistic discipline, has deep roots that stretch back to the early eighteen hundreds and has little in common with the contemporary understanding of the camera as a high-tech recording device or a mere image generator. Even silver-gelatin film photography is a relatively recent development by comparison with the early platinum, gum bichromate, and carbon processes.
The camera, film, and print materials, in thoughtful hands, are little different from the tools and materials of the painter or printmaker. In our contemporary commercialized world of a blizzard of manicured high intensity “images”, making anything but superficial appreciation impossible, photography as a true fine art form often gets lost in the noise. There is a more reflective and thoughtful place and in it light and life still merge.
Christopher R. Willingham