Revisiting Creative Authenticity

Some years ago I had a small limited participation blog. We discussed many things that I thought was important about photography. Obviously didn’t change many minds but I did try.

Back in about 2002 I wrote down five personal tenets of photography; one being that the object photographed is not the subject of the photograph. The object photographed is the subject matter, the subject of the photograph is the story the photograph tells. That seems very simple and very straight forward to me but it was not a concept that I seemed to be able to get across to other people.

Tonight, I was out at dinner but since I had eaten at home I took one of the many books that we had discussed on the aforementioned blog, Ian Robert’s Creative Authenticity. Ian is a painter but every time he uses the word painter in the book you can substitute photographer and the meaning rings just as true.

On page 158 is a truth that I feel is very important, one of the many truths Roberts discusses. “

“Paint Photograph compositions, not subjects. The picturesque detracts from meaning. Affectations of beauty and showiness will only distract from the power of the poetry.” That is a very powerful statement. Let it sink in for just a minute—photograph compositions, not subjects (here he is using the word subjects to mean what I call subject matter).

On page 160, Roberts adds some detail. Although here I am going to rephrase a part of what he says because he goes Minor White on me and gets a little confusing.

“When looking at a painting photograph, most people are distracted by subject matter. But subject matter is really just an armature on which an artist hangs the composition of abstract shapes.”

According to Minor a photograph is a flat sheet of paper with smudges. According to David DuChemin it is simply lines, shapes, tones, and sometimes color. According to me, it is a new entity, totally separate of the subject matter, which has the potential of being a piece of art.

I do not care what something looks like, whether the tones or hues of the subject matter are correct. What I want the viewer to see is how I see the subject matter. As Minor White said, “Photograph an object not only for what it is but also for what else it is.”

In drawing a distinction between the documentarian and the artist (poetic) photographer, Minor wrote, “The documentarian would say, if you had stood where I stood when I took this photograph, we both would have seen what we both can see in this photograph. The poetic photographer would say, if you had stood where I stood when I took this photograph, neither of us would have seen what we both can see in this photograph.” I know I use this quote a lot but it is an extremely important statement.

It all comes down to looking AT a photograph or looking THROUGH a photograph. I will always believe that to be anything more than a picture taker with an expensive camera you have to be able to see a photograph and most amateur photographers are unable to do that—they see subject matter, they see technique, they see rules.

You will not be anything more than a technical photographer until you are able to discuss photographic technique as a means of writing the language of photography and not as rules or a skill set.

[added note] At the time of writing the above I could not remember the exact term Minor White used so I went with Documentarian. The exact term was Interpretative Documentarian. I believe that adding the Interpretative suggests that what Minor is talking about is not simply documenting--showing the viewer what the photographer saw. It does suggest that the photographer put more intellectual effort into capturing the essence of the object/objects photograph. This is the level, in my not so humble opinion, that most upper tier amateur photographers achieve. And in most cases, the highest level that they aspire to achieve. In other words, something on a higher plane than simply a snapshot but not reaching the level of truly art because their effort is directed toward the techniques of photography rather than an understanding of how technique allows a sharing of a personal vision.