Is Fine-Art Photography Really a Fine Art?:

And Other Heretic Meanderings

Jerry Buley, Ph.D.

copyright 2009 by Jerry Buley, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

The fine arts are not about truth.   Instead, they are about the ability to engender the full range of human emotion through the manipulation of the elements of their art form.  This can only happen when the artist is allowed to take liberty with the truth.  The painter paints what is not there.  The sculptor makes the form more perfect than it actually was. We even have a word for it in writing.  It's called "fiction."  And the fiction reader, without even being asked,  jumps immediately into the willing suspension of disbelief.

Photography was originated as a method for preserving with some fidelity what happened at the time the photograph was taken.  Probably cave drawings were completed for the same reason.  While painters, the artistic descendents of those early cave dwellers, today are allowed to go beyond the truth, photographers are not.

When the fiction writer makes us cry, we do not ask whether the story was true.  When the painter paints a beautiful landscape, we do not question whether it really exists.  Yet, many of us have heard the question asked in photography galleries around the world,  "Has that picture been photoshopped?" 

Though the question may say something about the photo-editing competence of the photographer, it also points to the commonly held assumption that photographers can only tell the truth.

The short answer to the question in the gallery is, "of course it has."  It is my estimate that fifty

 percent of all fine-art photographers today will admit to manipulating their images in a photo editor.  The other fifty percent lie.  The reason they lie is that photography is held to the standard of truth telling.    As an aside here, I wandered into a gallery dedicated to the classic photography masters in Carmel, California a few years ago and was amused when the clerk told me the none of these masters had manipulated their pictures after the snap of the shutter.  What I didn't tell the clerk was that Ansel Adams, one of their primary examples in the gallery, even published books about how he manipulated his pictures in  his darkroom, often for months, until he got a print with which he was satisfied.  Though contemporary photo-editing programs have more options than Adams had, much of what these programs do have direct corollaries with what Adams did in his dark room.  The  idea that photographers do not manipulate their images is absurd.  Yet, it is pervasive in galleries across the U.S. because photographers want buyers to think that the photographer did all of his magic before clicking the shutter.  He pointed the camera at the right subject in the right way, used the right filters, f/stop, and shutter speed, clicked the shutter and perfection appeared.

A gallery owner in Sedona very recently showed me a CD given to him by another photographer.  He implied that this photographer never manipulated his images.  As the gallery owner put it, the photographer didn't have to do any thing to the image to "correct it."  Though with strong disbelief riding my shoulders, I took the CD home.  The pictures were gorgeous.  The photographer had a good eye for composition and color.  In one picture it was apparent he had taken  several leaves of different sizes and had stacked them with the largest on the bottom and smallest on top.  Clearly, manipulation prior to clicking the shutter was okay.   On another, he used a flash to highlight the underside of several tall cacti.  Photographers are allowed to do anything they want before the shutter release, but nothing after.   How much sense does that make? 

The major point here the gallery owner was making is that there is no need to load a picture into Photoshop unless one has to correct it.  That is, something is wrong with it.  The implication is that if you were a good photographer you would not have to use Photoshop.  For awhile a few years ago it was de rigueur for a photographer to print his/her pictures complete with the surrounding edges of the negative fully visible.  I guess this was meant to be  "proof" that the pictures had not been cropped or manipulated.

Are we saying that while any other fine artist is allowed "correct" his/her work  (before it is sold, of course), a photographer is not?  I do not know a painter who does  not "correct" her'his work.  A fine artist always reserves that right.  Mary Dove, a fantastic sedona artist, says she never throws a piece away.  She always finds ways to correct her mistakes, even with water colors.  Writers, write and rewrite endings for their books, often changing them drastically to get the emotional effect they want.

  I once had my one my works critiqued at a critque event.  The critic, was a painter and taught art history among other art related classes at a local community college.  The critic was impressed by the fact that I waited for just the right moment to catch a bird flying in a part of the frame that made the picture perfectly balanced.  I could tell he was a little  shocked when I told him that I had put the bird into the picture using Adobe Photoshop.  Yet, as a painter I am sure he would not think twice about doing so in one of his paintings.

Some  fine-art photographers attempt to go to the extreme in truth telling.  They are the ones who take pictures in a drug house of people shooting up, of girls prostituting themselves, of the terribly dirty conditions, and so on.  I would call what they do photojournalism, not fine art because the focus is on truth telling.    Though I would not deign to expel these photographers from the fine arts, I wonder whether they are preventing others who give preferences to beauty over truth, from getting in.

 We have all gone into photography galleries where they are many gorgeous photographs, and walked from image to image marveling at the beauty of what we are seeing.  But, other than perhaps surprise and awe, what did we feel?  Fine-art photography has to be more than about beauty.

Writers have long had an edge on fine-art photography. We have all read poems and sections of novels that have caused us to feel strong emotions.  Hemingway, noted as one of our best writers, was once challenged to write a novel in 6 words, His response:

                    For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Your mind struggles at hearing these words. It asks questions, attempts to solve the puzzle.  So much complexity in just six short words.

As a writer, though I am not a Hemmingway, I know I can create very brief short stories/poems that have varying degrees of emotional content for emotions ranging from humor to grief.  I know that when I pair my images with text such as this, what I feel is greater than what either artistic modality could have produced on its own.  There is a synergy of meaning as I read the text and view the image. 

My goal has become to find a way to merge or meld image with text in such a way that the image is not subsumed by the text.  I do not want to create Hallmark card-like images.  Nor, do I want to create anything like sappy motivational poster.  What I want is an image that carries emotional content that is above and beyond what non-photojournalistic images can carry.  I conceded It is true that the image of a Vietnamese officer firing a gun point blank at the head of a suspected Viet Cong soldier carries emotional impact without text.  Though, it does have a context of which we were very aware when we viewed the image.

My favorite images generally have some sort of twist to them.  For example, one , a picture of two rusting sculptures of mariachi musicians behind a fence says something to me.  No, it screams at me.  My mind quickly gravitates to the phrase "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors," from  the poem "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost.  The picture appeared in Emeritus Voices a few issues back. 

I have begun my "experiment," and have now created a rather large number of combinations of image and text to date.  The success or lack of it is up to you the viewer.  What an artists wants to know, including me,  is whether the art they have created is actually creating an emotional response in the viewer.  Feedback is important.  If the "storied pictures" you have seen here move you, I would like to know about it.  Please feel free to contact me either way at jerry.buley@asu.edu

The responses from other artists and friends have been quite varied.  In the very beginning people were quite negative.    Many artists have attempted to dissuade me from even trying. After all, they say, if an image good, it is strong enough to stand by itself. Of course, that is true. But so what? What if I take that strong image and put it with an equally strong body of text pertaining to that image? Of course, it may change what a person thinks about the picture. But, again, so what?

Some have argued that photography is a visual art and that as such it should not be stained by text.  The purists in this school of thought tend toward abstraction in photography and would prefer not to even title their pictures except as "# 2," perhaps.   The "meaning" of such photographic art, they say, is acquired through experience and education.  Thus, a given piece will have more meaning for someone who has been educated than for someone who as not.  Basically, it is as if to say, "if you don't understand this, you haven't been educated enough."  Of course, by this theory opera is not a pure fine art since it combines instrumental music and voice. 

Another argument people have used against melding image and text is that it may cause someone to feel strong negative emotions.  Though the goal of any artist is to engender an emotional response, the specific response is unpredictable.  The meaning for any bit of text or image, is in the mind of the beholder.  Meanings are in people not in words and not in pictures. If my work is meaningful to my viewers, if it provokes feelings, prods thought, pushes biases, I say "hooray." I must be doing something right.  At the same time, I am not personally interested in duplicating Maplethorp's challenges to society.  Though, I believe our society, to survive, has to allow for that.

As many artists who have argued against the blending of text and image, just as many have been quite positive. I take from this controversy that I must be doing something right. Ultimately, the real measure of any idea in art, is the observer. If people like my merging of text and image well enough, they will buy them. If they don’t, they won’t. 

Most of us make a decision about a piece of art in the first few seconds we are observing It.   The average time viewers will spend with a given photograph in a gallery is less than 10 seconds.  If I can double or triple that, I will have succeeded.  I want my viewers to form an emotional tie to my images.  I want them to be thinking about my images hours, even days following their visit to the gallery. 

I want to see people looking back and forth between the text and the image, contemplating the meanings developing in their brains as each wraps around the other. The mind questions, probes, answers, and posits, and then begins again. You look, you read, and you move to another level of understanding. The emotions you feel may be positive or negative. They may be humorous or even sad. But they are all very real.