Is photography objective, is it 'art'?

Here is an interesting blog post discussing and comparing 'objectivity' in photography versus painting, and both these media compared to 'reality'. The author makes a compelling case and provides some concrete examples to back up his thesis that photography and painting are essentially the same, and neither can be said to capture reality. I suppose I conclude that he makes a good case since it pretty much dovetails with my own feelings all along, at least as regards photographs not equating with objective reality. Unlike the blog author however, I do see a rather distinct dividing line between a painting and a photograph.

 

As concerns photographs and objectivity there is a quote from photographer Sally Mann's book "Hold Still, a Memoir with Photographs" that I like very much and often bring up in such discussions:

 

This discussion of the art vs objectivity of photography comes up often and this blog post contributes some interesting ideas to the 'art' side of the debate. Here again is the link.

 

What are your opinions on this matter if you have any? I say 'opinions' because there is no right answer (that's why it's in the 'Philosophy' forum ;) )

Is "there is no right answer" right?

 

That, not your question, is no longer a matter of opinion matter, and thus at home in a philosophy forum.

I’ll read the link and comment further, but my initial reaction is to play Devil’s advocate. Of course I get Sally Mann’s point and agree with it, but she states it poorly.

 

“How can a sentient person of the modern age mistake photography for reality?”

 

How can they not? Of course, photography is reality. A photo is every bit as real as a chair, a table, or my little finger.

 

We’re really talking about it’s adequacy of representation, and not about reality. Photography is one real thing representing another. BUT … photos aren’t limited to their representative quality. There’s the expressive, emotional and abstract character of them as well. The camera may be pointed at a vase, but it’s point may be to “capture” much more than vase. Still lifes, as much as representing their object, can express the mood of the moment, via perspective, distortion, focus, exposure, and other tools a photographer has.

 

Photographers should be aware that they’re creating a new reality, a photo, something other than what is pictured.

 

A photo is a new object in the world, just like the objects pictured in it. That’s often forgotten, but it’s a key. A photo is an object very different from the thing/s it was pointed at. I think art begins to emerge when that’s considered … create.

 

What I’d add to Sally Mann’s idea is that in “excluding aspects of the moment’s reality,” a photo can also very much add to that reality … the photographer’s own summation/expression of it. And, as some great darkroom and post processing work has shown, many good photographers perform addition as well as subtraction.*

 

*Thanks to @inoneeye for pointing this out in a recent thread.

OK, just read the link. Thanks.

 

As is often the case, emphasis is a key. There are lots of similarities and lots of differences between painting and photography. A lot of the arts overlap. Photographs can be said to have rhythm and there are maneuvers made in photography that are like brushstrokes. A lot of the visual aspects that go into one go into the other. Yet, each is also unique. One uniqueness of a photo is that, for the most part, I point a camera at something in the world that's immediately before the lens. Painting is often more a start-from-scratch affair.

 

I waited and was finally gratified to hear the author acknowledge something important about photography, regarding the objectivity aspect:

 

"Photographs seem objective and real in a way that most paintings don’t. In some ways, they are."

 

Again, I'd say not that photographs seem real, because photographs are real. I'd say they are taken to represent what they picture more accurately. This is because the camera is pointed at something.

 

But that seeming objectivity can be a blessing and a curse. It still requires a discerning viewer to know how limited or distorted or one-sided or prejudiced a view a photo can represent. Or a viewer might realize that a particular photo or set of photos simply represents the photographer's expression as much or more than the thing pictured. Or a viewer might realize the relative accuracy of a lot of photos in representing what's pictured, so they can rely on one when buying a shirt or when deciding what house to go look at for purchase, etc. Of course, there will always be surprises and some photos do a better job of this kind of representation than others. But there's a reason we use photos all the time like this and they are often successful to the extent we need them to be.

 

Very little of this is an on/off switch. How "objective" a photo or painting is is often a matter of degree, and not a matter of all 'er nothin'.

 

Cameras are still not allowed in some courtrooms, where you have courtroom sketch artists often doing a pretty good job of objectively representing the scene. Like I said, they are not absolutely objective, but they achieve an acceptable degree of objectivity for the purpose.

It should help a lot if people in general finally understood that there is no such thing as 'objectivity' or objective r4epresentation or objective. There is nothing to be a semblance or hint of.

It's not as if we (mankind) do not know that for almost as long as we can remember being.

Photography isn't reality. How could it be? A picture of me isn't me. It only depicts me. However, a 35mm unedited slide more accurately depicts to more people what was there than a painting.

This highly interesting topic resumes two different threads we have developed long time ago.

1. A spin-off thread: when is a photo a work of art?
   
2. In the end the appreciation of photography is completely subjective
   

I will try to find time to read through them again and see how the reasoning can be taken one step further after well over a decade.

 

PS I miss Julie H's insights very much in this forum!

PS I miss Julie H's insights very much in this forum!

 

Yes, I recall she was an excellent questioner and commenter. All her posts were thought provoking. I too miss her user-name on posts.

Reality is everything that exists. It follows that photographs also exist. The rub, however, is discerning what sort of reality photos have.

What I understand by ‘objectivity’ is the interpretation of a stimulus without significant influence of personal feelings or prejudices. We always rely on our own references and standards (could be a common standard, such as colors that resemble that of of a red rose are red) to assess a scene, therefore a layer of common interpretation is always in play that has minimal variation from person to person and is therefore part of objective perception.

 

Can art be objective?

 

The way OP was posed makes a tantalizing hint at the relationship between art and objectivity. First of all, I don’t think these two are mutually exclusive, which probably many here will agree with. In the painting of Mona Lisa, her identity is subjective, there are questions about whether she represents the original subject, the wife of the Italian nobleman or the artist himself. Such interpretations may vary from person to person, but is her smile enigmatic? There may not be much disagreement among people regarding this question (except the exceptions that always plague any consensus).

 

So, my point is, objectivity is always ‘subject’ to the question being asked. Some aspects of an artwork can be subjective, while others can be objective, depending on the question being asked.

 

A photograph can have multiple aspects of objective truths attached to it. First of all, it’s a captured moment, a correspondence with a specific point in time and space (not considering composites). Then there are artist’s touches: framing, lighting, post processing, these are objective truths as well, just as artist’s brush strokes and the canvas in a painting are objective. There is also another objective layer which is the artist’s personal truth that he/she is trying to imbibe the photo with. It may be a message, or a question or a gesture, but whatever it is, it’s objective because it comes from the creator of the art and art is a creation. It’s not a copy of reality. So whatever is created has to be considered in its own merit as being objective. What really is subjective here is the spectrum of personal reactions to a photo or art that differ from person to person, although some aspects of a photo can be so strong that there may not be much deviation from a common reaction.

 

These are my thoughts so far.

Does it actually really matter , is "everything" nothing but a dream anyway ? , who really knows ?.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

One of the great potentials I see in photos is their ability, as if by necessity, to merge reality and imagination. For the most part, I point the camera at something in the world, and then I come up with something different, a photo. In creating that photo, from advance thought (if it's present) to setting exposure and adopting perspective to post processing, I use my imagination to create a photo.

 

As discussed in the thread on "Concepts," sometimes it starts with a concept and we use our imagination to look for ways to photograph the world that express that concept. Sometimes, it's a very different process. But always, aware of it or ready to admit it or not, we bring something to the table, most often more rather than less if we're not fooling ourselves into thinking we're just Xeroxers with sophisticated and expensive gear.

 

With photography, there's a grounded-ness I feel myself working off, and it's for me to choose—in any degree I want for each particular photo—what degree of "fidelity" I want to maintain to what's before the camera. In fact, sometimes my photographic imagination, I believe, already changes what I'm seeing before the camera as it begins to transform what I see into photoland before I ever take the shot.

 

I do think it's in this counterpoint between what the camera is actually pointed at and what a photo can end up being and reflecting that some of photography's most important qualities and nuances reside. To build on Rousseau's words ... a limited reality bumps up against a boundless imagination and something new is born that synthesizes them. I find that exciting.