On Photography
The New Photography
(Or
New Deal Photography
and the
Social Security Crises)
When confronted with good architecture or works of art, the photographer has a certain obligation to respect the forms already created -Ansel Adams, The Camera, The Creative Approach
It's
interesting that the prophet of creative photography, who believed he
photographed what was in his minds eye, rather than what lay before
him,
whose photographs were emotive notes on a musical scale, would
nonetheless speak of respect for the order and form of external things
as they really existed.
The "straight photographers" made
point that a photograph should look like a photograph and not copy
other art media, specifically, they took exception of the reigning
impressionism of the turn of the century and ushered in an era of
modernism in photography. They rejected, sometimes violently,
pictorialism, the reigning photographic aesthetic of the times. History
has sided with them. Stieglitz and Adams were prophets of a new age.
Degas is well known for his pastel
studies of feminine beauty. Lesser known is his photographs of feminine
beauty as works of art in their own right. However, on study the same
aesthetic animates both media, proving it the possession of not media,
but artist. The same spirit, hence power animates
both.
The surface effects of the
manipulated print would come back to haunt those patriarchs of
photographic Modernism, for in photography today, surface effect is
about all that
remains. As it turns out, photography is not yellow boxes and rock
solid
compositional views of the landscape made with tiny apertures and large
cameras. Photography, at least if it is to survive, like a view to the
whole world, is so much bigger than that.
There is a renewal of
classical realism sweeping the world of painting today. We had
Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and endless progression of styles and
movements under the illusion that art was the novel, and defined as
that never before produced. However novelty for novelty sake, is an
aesthetic dead
end, and ateliers of authentic classical spirit are popping up
everywhere.
More important the spirit of this
revival is neither academic, nor neo-classical both failed movements of
the past. Though carefully following the perceptual form of things as
they
really are, its art lay in no mere copy of things but rather in spirit.
No brushstoke tantrums, no wild throes of adolescent rebellion, no
smoke
and mirrors, we see in the New Realism a disciplined spirit content
to look at, and live in a world as it really is. The Realist sees no
discontinuity between himself and the world about him, but rather a
harmony to seek in nature that which defines himself. The world of
nature in its form and beauty is a great teacher, not just of
landscapes, but spirit. It is a belief in the beauty, not just of the
world, but the world of man.
© 2006 Timothy Martin Gillan
Photography
