Photographer As Genius

<p>At the risk of sounding naive, I have a difficult time equating photographers and genius. What is it that makes one photographer a genius and another not? I've always believed that genius lies in original creation such as a great piece of literature, art, or music, but photographers seem to be more or less documenting what has already been created. A photograph is indeed a creation, but unlike a painting the photograph is more like a mirror than an original creation born from a blank sheet. The photographer's creation has already been created.</p>

<p>In the case of Ansel Adams, to use an obvious example, his creation of the Zone System seems like pure genius to me, but his photographs don't strike me as such. The genius of Half Dome seems to lie more in the genius of nature rather than the genius of Adams. Adams recorded it and interpreted it, but he didn't create it. In the so-called pure art forms, the artist had created the substance of their art, not so with photographers.</p>

<p>What is photographic genius? What about a photographer's work makes him or her a genius, and how do you know when you've seen it? Any ideas?</p>

<p>Some genius photographers are more genius marketers (Wegman or Geddes, perhaps?). Others simply got around to doing something in a certain way first (Adams), and with flair. Others have a genius for connecting to the right sources of subjects and being at least very good about doing insightful work with the opportunity they've created (Leibovitz?).<br /><br />But your notion that a photographer isn't creating something... sorry, I'm just not buying it. Some create the scenes they're rendering essentally from whole cloth. Others have a genius for understanding that a familiar sight will become fresh, moving, or newly freighted with meaning simply by seeing it from a different point of view, at a different time, or juxtaposed with some other unfamiliar element. Such synthesis is pure creativity.</p>

<p>Maybe some photographers are a genius when they can make a living with their work and not rely on other sources of income to live.</p>

<p>Hi Jeffery, your comment that <strong> "but photographers seem to be more or less documenting what has already been created" </strong> is only true some of the time. In many cases...particularly in commercial work<strong>....</strong> the final image works because the designer of it has brought together a number of items, attitudes, and visual arrangements, lighting angles etc., which previously did not exist in the context of his/her concept.</p>

<p>In other words, Adams photographed what was already there, in front of him....so in that context, he did not so much create an image as simply record one. This is in contrast to the photographer who creates a visual construct which did not exist prior to his creating it....</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>"but unlike a painting the photograph is more like a mirror than an original creation born from a blank sheet"</p>

<p>This is a curious criteria for determining the value of photography as art vs. painting considering its inaccuracy. Sometimes photographers create a scene to photograph. Sometimes painters just copy the scene in front of them. It doesn't take a "genius" to figure out that these sort of broad characterizations about a particular art form having merit while others don't is nonsense. Nonsense that was directed at photography when it first came about many decades ago.</p>

<p>Making an argument about film or digital being better will bring you in to the 21st century at least.</p>

<p>Matt, I've just never looked at a photograph and thought to myself that it was "pure genius" although I have been totally impressed by Leibovitz and LaChapelle which sort of ties into what Bob said. Maybe it's knowing that anyone can take a photograph, on their very first try, and if someone was lucky enough, even take a great photograph unlike other arts where all the luck in the world is not going to help you create War And Peace, or to compose and perform great music.</p>

<p>Bill, that might be marketing genius. ;)</p>

 

<p>Well John, you seemed to be somewhat unkind to me. I was sincerely trying to learn something, and I never assumed that my observations were correct, or that I even believed what I had observed. I did originally say that I risked sounding "naive" which was sort of a subtle way of saying that I'm here to learn something rather than being humiliated. Anyway, your sarcastic, caustic point was taken.</p>

 

<p>Geniuses can also get lucky, but the average Joe's lucky shot doesn't make him a genius. The genius is drawing on something that allows her to more consistently work at the "lucky" level. Most genius, though, is really just the presence of the crystal clear understanding that long, hard work and focus is what separates the average Joe's work from the well-known artist's. Perhaps put another way: the average Joe gets lucky, and the "genius" understands how to make and exploit his own luck.</p>

<p>Just to add, I'm not disputing that photography is an art form; I know it is, and that encompasses everything that holds true for all the arts, but just that to me, photography, doesn't impress me in the same way that the other art forms do. I've experienced strong emotion seeing a blurry/ grainy photograph of newsworthy tragic events, but it had more to do with, I believe, the real life subject rather anything the photographer did. Most of the so-called greatest photographs just leave me bored and numb unlike the great song or the great book. I even suspect that maybe there's just something wrong with me, and yet there's something about photography that makes me want to pursue it even though I'm not that impressed by it.</p>

<p>Jeffrey, I agree with your point. I think that for most photographic geniuses, if their name were removed from the print and the print judged on its own merit, much of what people go gaga over would receive yawns instead.</p>

<p>Now, having said that- A photo might look boring. Until you try to duplicate it, that is. Ansel Adams' work may seem like a record of a scene, but that is missing the point. The scene doesn't actually look like that. If it did all photos of that scene would look like Adams' work. Adams was a darkroom wizard. He was so good at it that you can't tell. You look at his prints and assume that's the way Half Dome looks all day. It doesn't. At least it doesn't look like that if you take a picture of it. To get all of that into one print is genius on a technical level. </p>

<p>The thing about art is that it is subjective. Millions love HCB. I don't. Millions love Diane Arbus. I don't. I wouldn't pay ten cents for any photo by either of them. However, millions of people would and they can't all be stupid. They are looking for something that I am not seeing or for something I see but don't care to see. Whatever. I am a W. Eugene Smith guy all the way. To me, he is a genius. His genius was connecting with people on a basic human level. Many others don't agree with me. That is what makes photography great.</p>

<p>You make a good point Matt, and I would have to agree, but it makes me suspicious that an absolute beginner could even create a great photograph at all. No beginner is going to be able to sit down at a piano and write and perform a great concerto no matter how lucky they are. Isn't that curious or is it just me?</p>

<p>Thanks John, Adams was amazing in the darkroom, and I'm sure that no one could recreate Half Dome, but that could apply to all the bad photographs in the world as well.</p>

<p>I believe, FWIW, that Adams was a genius, but more for what he did in the darkroom and with a pen rather than what he did behind the camera.</p>

<p>Agreed.</p>

<p>But a beginner <em>can</em> sit down and bang the keys on the piano. Many snapshots are the photographic equivalent of banging tunelessly on the piano keys. Certainly not many geniuses (in the Steven Hawking, or Leonardo da Vinci sense) stand out among photographers. Rather, certain audiences will find certain photographers to be unusually adept at capturing certain subjects. People who know horses, for example, might see the work of a particularly talented and practiced equine photographer, and see genius in that person's ability to capture and portray something subtle and special within that discipline. To the rest of us? It's a horse picture.</p>

<p>Edward Weson, Ansel Adams (whoi was far more than a darkroom wizard -- he had to have an idea of what he wanted to say and then figure outthe best way to say it), Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt, Chris Callis, Richard Avedon, Gjon Mili, Harold Edgarton ( a certified genius), Irving Penn, Jay Maisel, Ernst Haas, Phillipe Halsman, Karsh, Pete Turner, Munkasi, Jodi Cobb, Ezra Stoller, Herb Ritts, Robert Mapplethorpe, ... I could go on.</p>

<p>No genius in any field creates <em>ex nihilo</em> - -from nothing --they always build on what has come before them. Any 'genius " will tell you that.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>It's true that a beginner can't sit down and pound out a beautiful work on a piano.</p>

<p>However, a beginner can hit one key, which to me, sounds quite nice. The problem is that you're comparing ONE nice photograph with a concerto, or longer work. If a beginner can sit down with a camera, and take 50 nice photos, all with a consistent vision, focus, and sense of purpose - heck even a reason for existence - equal to Ansel Adams, Arbus, or anyone else, that's the equal of what you're talking about.</p>

<p>Also you forget you're comparing two different things.<br>

PLAYING a piano is a very technical, practiced, skill. Yes, it involves artistry, but the amount of creation involved in the actual playing is secondary to the tens of thousands of hours necessary to learn it. Suffice it to say that no matter how creative you are, without years of finger destroying labor, you will never be an amazing piano player.<br>

<br /> COMPOSING a work of music is entirely different. While it does involve immense technical skill it is a primarily creative act. It isn't necessary to spend your entire life practicing every instrument known to man to be a good composer. Some people can do it, others can't. It's a skill that can be practiced, but unlike the piano, can't be technically mastered and then made artistic later on.</p>

<p>That's not to say that playing the piano, is an uncreative pursuit, but it's very different.</p>

<p>Some photographers are like excellent pianists, and can print better than Adams - but their prints lack a conceptual or compositional focus that would make them genius. I know several of these, and admire their skill<br>

Other photographers can compose amazing images but have inconsistent tone or exposure levels, and would be best off being art directors and leaving the exposure to a "performer"- which many fashion and commercial photogs do (not that they don't have the talent, but they're busy composing not taking).<br>

While this doesn't completely answer any question, it does lead you to remember that calling a photographer just a photographer is like comparing Luciano Pavarotti to Motzart. Both talented and hard workers with deep innate talent, but to compare them, despite the fact that they both make, or made, music, is very simplistic.<br>

So a better argument to make would be along these lines:<br>

"I admire artists who have a technical skill that takes years to master, despite and inherent talents; photography while in some respects is one of these pursuits is in many ways, especially with the invention of digital, not."</p>

 

Jeffrey,

 

This is the same argument painters and other creative types have been making since someone said something about a

photographer being an artist. I find it similar to asking what makes a woman beautiful? As my poor dead mama used to say,

God rest her soul, "a dark bar and a pitcher of beer." She did have a way with words! There really is no answer.

 

Mark

<p>It's definitely possible to accidentally take a great photograph. You don't have to be a genius, you can just happen to be where the picture is, by accident, and the camera'll do the rest. Thus, great photographers are more accident-prone than the rest of us. Since that isn't really statistically possible, they must be magic. Don't know about you but I'd rather be magic than a genius. I mean have you ever been to a gathering of mensa members?</p>

Jeffery, "...photograph is indeed a creation, but unlike a painting the photograph is more like a mirror than an original creation. " Creativity in a brush but not a camera? Between digital cameras and Photoshop I think the photographers' palettes are a lot heavier than, let's say an oil painter.

<p>It may be easy to take a photograph but it's very hard to make photographs that look like they were taken by you. In painting it's just the opposite.</p>

 

<p>On being complimented for his exquisite organ playing, Johann Sebastian Bach is said to have remarked "There is nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right notes at the right time, and the instrument plays itself."</p>

<p> By any dictionary definition, there's many geniuses in photography, as in most human endeavors.</p>

<p>No, all photographers are not created equal. In a recent interview, Bill Clinton (please, no political comments) told how he began playing his sax, and how he got better, and one day, someone gave him a Coltrane album. He said he cried when he heard it, because he knew that no matter how long he practiced, that he would never be that good.</p>

<p>Most rank and file photographers are too egomaniacal to accept brutal truths of this type. Even some very well-known ones in particular fields.</p>

<p> Photographs gleefully betray their maker's innermost strengths and weaknesses. They look like they were made generically because their maker has a generic mindset. For them to look any other way (aside from technical gimmickry), the photographer has to individuate, and as if by magic, the photographs will follow.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Go to Yellowstone. Hike around with a camera that weighs more than your computer on your back for a few weeks. Take half a dozen exposures without "chimping" or the aid of histograms. No take backs, no redos. Heck, take a few of them under moonlight just to make things harder on yourself. Pack everything up and take the whole setup back to camp... in the dark... where you process your giant negatives using the Zone System that you have developed to determine how the negative will look.. using your vast knowledge of these things. Then, take those negatives and make prints of them, tweaking them even more to get the dramatic effects that you want. Then take those prints to Congress and see if they move politicians emotionally enough to get them to preserve huge tracts of land that are covered in trees made out of money with possibly oil underneath again made out of money, and have them preserved forever so that no one can sell it off and log it and build condos on it. When you do that, then you can argue if the man was not a genious. Just because today we live in a day and age of over-saturation of photographers doesn't make the greats any less great... in fact, I find that the more millions of terrible photographers there are out there, the more that the truely great ones stand out to me. You can't use Photoshop to fake genious, although many have tried.... the genious part happened before the shutter tripped, before the camera was even setup. It was there behind the eyes that imagined the vision before it appeared before his eyes. Adams didn't just show up and take snap-shots and hope for the best. The photographs existed in his brain before he even went out. He spent days studing the sunrise and sunset, the mist rising from the valleys, the way the clouds formed over the mountains, all so that he would know when and where to setup to get the vision he wanted. He did what the scenic painters of 100 years before accomplished by making it up. Adams didn't just invent the scene and paint it, he figured out how to take a photograph of it. That's the difference between a painting or a photoshopped image and a real photograph. It's not that someone had the vision of a scene, it's that someone had a vision of a scene and figured out how to photograph it... to conjure that scene to exist, if only for one split second in the real world and capture it on film.</p>

<p>Sorry Jeffrey but there was no sarcasm. If you characterize an entire art form as less worthy than another on a forum about that art form, you shouldn't express shock and dismay when someone there registers disapproval.</p>

<p>I think the genuis of documentary photography comes from being able to place yourself at the right place, at the right time and know when to push the shutter button having already attached the lens that's going to give you the composition with the most impact, while simultaneously ensuring you have the right exposure. Easier to do than type. Certainly anybody with the money for an airline ticket can get there but will you know what to do when you arrive?Many photographers are overwhelmed by the possibilities when they find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, a foreign language and without a guide telling them where to point the camera.<br>

Sure anybody can take a photo (witness the cover of National Geographic back in the 80's which was shot by Koko the Gorilla) but pure genius shines through. Our problem in this day and age is that we're so overwhelmed with sub-standard imagery that we rarely get the chance to witness pure genius.<br>

That ability to pluck out the magic elements from a scene crowded with irrelevant interruptions. The ability to see in the mind's eye what you want your picture to be and to wait patiently until it plays out in front of you (hopefully). It's all part of the genius. A photographer can work his or her entire career and only come out with a handful of images that are perfect, but striving for that perfection is what brings out genius.<br>

Sure what we photograph is created for us, but often that creation lasts for only a fraction of a second, never to be repeated. Can you capture that moment to ensure it's seen by future generations? Or will you (me, any of us) miss the opportunity by a fraction of a second. That's the difference between genius and ho-hum</p>