On Photography
On
Photographic
Interpretation
On Photographic Intrepretation
Photography is an analytic medium. It is the fascinating stuff of real visual life. Where, what, how. We associate it primarily to the real visible world in time. Thus the centrality of its realism or straight qualities. However, its synthetic qualities, though less obvious, are as real, and as an art, photography was practiced as a synthetic media from the beginning by artists, as art. As much as we might recognize a real visual subject, we might also understand its poetic or aesthetic qualities. The language of allegory, symbol, soul, is the inheritance it was born with from painting.
This is especially true in figurative studies and work. It engages contemplation, meditation, the sense of the real, hence has specific aesthetic value.
Its analytic qualities
define the whole issue of realism, its synthetic, the whole issue of
its art. In classic photography even a straight image without pretense
of "art," contains both. And when these are mastered, parallel the racy markings of a
bird, the flow of a mountain stream over a rock, the burst of sunrise
over a chilly autumn day, when touching the soul, and reflecting
something of the inner man on grand scale, we have fine art.
© 2006 Timothy Martin Gillan
Photography
