Why take a photo over drawing or painting?

question... what makes a person desire to shoot a photo instead of drawing or

painting the scene? And time factor isn't the only thing... what can photography

provide that painting or drawing or printmaking can't do?

It's fast.

 

It's easier to get good results for a person who can't draw.

 

If there's a film negative, it's also accuratley and precisely documented in a way that's hard to tamper with, whereas a drawing can be altered at the whim of its creator to a much greater degree.

 

Smaller formats are more portable than drawing utensils.

 

The film may well capture something that your eye did not.

If we speak of art and not documentarism, people like different art forms maybe because of their history (as a kid), social context, skills, or available resources bias them. No simple reasons, but I guess they are as much social than skill-related.

 

The observed realism of photography gives it special expressive power.

"what can photography provide that painting or drawing or printmaking can't do?"

 

The moment.

We've tried using painter journalist, they did nice work but they kept missing deadlines (and if you think editors are cranky try telling an artist that we need something in 10 minutes-whew). And the sporting events they covered all looked like Picasso's, great for gracing the walls of the Louvre, but our readers couldn't tell one team from the other (is that the ball or a eye?). Next we tried drawing journalists. They worked well when there wasn't a deadline, we used them a lot for trials, but again with the breaking news thing. We've tried sculptures, but that was just a disaster, the medical cost from dislocated shoulders just about did us in. Finally, and with much hesitation, we thought we'd try photography. Well it hasn't been easy but it seems to be working out so far. I'll keep you posted.

"what can photography provide that painting or drawing or printmaking can't (do)?"

 

 

- succeed in creating a massive personal entertainment industry and millions of jobs

(painting allows a certain number of such opportunbities, for gallerists, museums,

etc, in addition to the creators, but at a much more limited level);

 

 

- allow an access to artistic expression, without the need to be a proficient painter or

drawer (without photography, many might not be able to express themselves in that

manner);

 

 

- facilitate the capturing of the moment (painting can do the same, but less easily

and subject to the risk/uncertainty of time distortion on the part of the artist);

 

 

- allow the masses of people to be recorded, whereas painting (portraiture,

specifically) is out of the reach of many of us;

 

 

- provide criminal evidence, event recording (wars, peace), that are not normally

practical with painting or drawing.

Bravo don e.

 

With a photograph i can capture an instant of beauty (or horror) that exists in the world.. that others simply never see. I can show them their own world through the eyes they should have. I can pull beauty out of despair. And it is real rather Not an imagined, artificially created pontification.

 

I can show them magic.

I was discussing this photo.net's founder Philip Greenspun this afternoon as we walked through the High Museum in Atlanta.

 

I think the reason is that, technically speaking photography is the easiest of the arts to practice with some level of satisfaction with the results. .

If you have to ask, you will never understand, regardless of the answers you may get.

Ellis: I agree with what you said up to a point. It is among the easiest of the visual arts. Another which I find relatively easy is ceramics. But to reach the highest level in photography as art is very difficult indeed. Once you learn to draw and paint, photography is often more difficult than those disciplines. The original question is an interesting one. What does photography provide which the others do not? To me it was always several things, especially the beauty of real light skimming over a 3 dimensional surface in a B&W silver print, something which painting can copy but not equal. Then there is (or was) the reality that if you saw a picture of something it happened. This was always, to me, the most wonderful thing about photography. Of course since digital and photoshop this is no longer so. And a lesser matter, but important for someone who has speny many years with his hands encrusted with clay or oil paint, is that it is nicer to touch a Leica or an Ebony. Also there is a question of time. I just finished a life sized, realistic portrait of a woman from below the knees to the top of the head. It is in oils, and took most of my spare time for three months. It could have been done as a photograph considerably more quickly and a little less expensively, though the results and creative satisfaction would have been much less.

For me it's because I can't draw or paint to save my life. And I do have an artistic side that I need to express... Photography lets me do that in ways that I can never aspire to via a pen and paper.

 

Maybe it's like asking a band member why the guitar instead of the piano or drums...

 

Dave

The reason to take a photograph over a drawing or painting is not decided by what the picture looks like. If (and it may be a big if) you want a picture that encapsulates the unique relationship between a photograph and its subject then nothing else will do.

 

A photograph, a real photograph that is, is generated by the arrival into a sensitive surface of a physical sample of subject matter.

 

Yes, something that was part of the subject travels across space at about 300 000km/sec, gets spatially organised by a lens (or a pinhole, or a zone plate, or something else) and causes an arrangement of marks to form in the sensitive surface that it enters. That arrangement of marks is a picture of the subject; a photograph.

 

Everything else, drawings, paintings, inkjets, etchings, whatever, are fabricated according to a description, not a physical sample, of the subject.

 

The relationship between a subject and the photograph happens nowhere else in art. All the energy for a photograph comes from the subject. The only place the energy comes from to generate a photograph is the subject. Remember, photography was invented in, and works perfectly in, a world without electric power.

 

There are many picture making methods which can make things that look remarkably like photographs. Photo-realist paintings, mezzotints, inkjet prints, and photo-lithographs are examples. But "looks like" doesn't mean "same as". The fundamental difference remains, pictures made from samples versus pictures made from descriptions, and that difference is central and decisive.

Bravo, Maris. "That difference is central and decisive"

"The fundamental difference remains, pictures made from samples versus pictures made from descriptions, and that difference is central and decisive."

 

If a computer file (a 'digital photograph') is exposed to a film recorder is the difference eliminated?

<i>The fundamental difference remains, pictures made from samples versus pictures made from descriptions, and that difference is central and decisive.</I><p>This is a ridiculous viewpoint that emerges from a failure to grow with the world. Photography is a technological process, always has been, always will be. Denying technological change is denying photography. The question here wasn't about extreme right wing views of photography, it was about the relationship between photography and painting/drawing. Speaking for myself on that topic, I am floored when I look at paintings I love. I would much rather paint than photograph, it is the triumph of imagination, which is what art is about, but I just don't have any way to make the thoughts in my brain translate into movements in my hand.

<p>My answer to the original question is: the same thing that makes a person

dance, sing, sculpt, do mathematical physics, write, or choose any of a million

other alternatives to painting or drawing.</p>

<p>The question, for me, embodies a misconception: that drawing and painting are

somehow "the real thing", while photography a gimcrack imitation.</p>

<p>Painting and drawing are just two wonderful manifestation options available

to the creative impulse (photography is one of many other wonderful

alternatives). They gained primacy in the European (and, by cultural and

extension, US etc) tradition through the particular set of historical

circumstances which accompanied the renaissance; it could equally well have been

otherwise.</p>

<p>In my personal opinion (there is room, of course, for an infinity of other

opinions), it's well beyond time for photographers to stop shackling their

medium arbitrarily to painting or drawing. There is (again, in my own personal

perception) in any case a much closer relation between photography and sculpture

and/or story telling - but I don't see the need to make it be <i>anything</i>

else but itself.</p>

<p>Where the above is just my opinion, I can't resist answering Maris Rusis on

factual grounds:</p>

<p>MR> The only place the energy comes from to<br>

MR> generate a photograph is the subject.<br>

<br>

This is very rarely true. It is true of those specialist infra red cameras which

photograph objects by their own heat ... it is true of firework photographs ... a couple of other examples come to mind ...

but these are unusual. In general, the only place the energy comes from to

generate a photograph is an external light source. In the days before

electricity which Maris evokes, it came from the sun; now it can also come from

artificial sources as well, but rarely from the subject.</p>

Thats easy, I can't draw or paint for shit.

We knew there would be as many answers as there are photographers. And they are all true.

 

One thing i think all of us missed. There is an element of hunting. Of stalking and capturing your prey. Whether it be a ray of light shining between buildings, or a bug on a table or a wildebeast drinking water. We hunt. We seek out our prey. Shoot it and capture it. The neat thing about photography is we dont harm it. In many ways we help it. We take nothingness and return a gift. When i talk to hunters (i dont hunt) who ask me about it, think its very artsy fartsy and snooty and explain that they get it instantly.

<p>"I can't draw or paint for shit" and "it's easier and faster" are good, valid

reasons for photographing instead of painting or drawing ... but they are not

the only ones - and they are predicated on  photography as second prize.</p>

<p>If ask someone why they drive to work instead of walking, the range of

practical reasons might range from "it's a long way, and would take too long to

walk" through "it's raining" to "I can't be arsed to walk". There might also be

other reasons such as "I enjoy the feeling of driving" or "the speed exhilarates

me" or "it gives me my only private period of solitude to think, and save my

sanity". I've heard all of those reasons given. The first set have, as their

unspoken premise, that "walking is better, but...", while the second set offer a

positive reason why driving is better for that person.</p>

<p>Much the same would be true in the other direction - I might say "I walk

because I can't afford a car", or "because I haven't passed my driving test".

Alternatively I might say "I walk because it makes me feel good" or "because it

is less polluting to the environment". Again, the first set of reasons are valid

but negative, the second set positive.</p>

<p>Photography is an utterly different thing from drawing and painting. If I

can't draw, there's nothing wrong with me taking up photography as second prize

... but I should not kid myself that I am thereby doing the same thing by a

different means: I am doing something else instead.</p>

<p>A few years back, one of my photography students spent weeks perfecting an A3

sized photorealistic painting of a young man in the street. Until you examined

the texture of the surface closely, it fooled the eye into thinking that it was

a photograph. He was poised to cross the road, head turned left to gauge the

traffic, one foot alread off the ground. He was seen from the other side of the

road. I knew the stretch of road, and she hadn't altered it in even the tiniest

detail: so far as that place was concerned, it was a photographic representation

in paint. She clearly wasn't studying photography because she couldn't draw or

paint.</p>

<p><b>Me:</b> "Is he real?"</p>

<p><b>She:</b> "Yes. Every day, as I come here, I cross that street at that

point. I wait, and almost every day he crosses it towards me in exactly that

way, looking exactly like that."</p>

<p><b>Me:</b> "Then why not take a photograph, since your painting is

indistinguishable from one anyway?"</p>

<p><b>She:</b> "If I took a photograph, I'd have a redundant record of what I

can already see every day ... but with this painting I've held him in my hands,

made love to him for days on end, made him part of me. Why would  take a

photograph?"</p>

<p>A couple of months later, as the end of year shows were being assembled, the

same student was putting up photographs of the same young man.</p>

<p><b>Me:</b> "After what you told me before, why have you started taking

photographs of him?</p>

<p><b>She:</b> "We're living together, now. Painting him was a way of making

love to him from a distance. Photographing him is a way to carry love out into

the world."</p>

<p>I suspect I'm rambling, with no clear exit strategy ... time to go.</p>

William Fox-Talbot, one of the founders of photography, and the inventor of the negative, took up his photographic experiments in 1834 partly because he could not draw or paint to his satisfaction. He caled his photos 'photogenic drawing' and his first book was called 'The Pencil of Nature'.

William Henry Fox Talbot (the inventor of the negative/positive process) originally called his discovery "photogenic drawing" - until his friend, Sir John Hershel urged a change in name for the process to "photography."

 

(Hershel, of course, was also the person who changed photography by urging Fox Talbot to try sodium hyposulfite, or "hypo," to "fix" his prints. He was also the inventor of the Argentotype, also known through variations of the process as: Van Dyke print, Kallitype, Sepiaprint, and Brownprint.)

 

Pardon my digression, but I find the historical background and the etymology of the words involved speak as much to the subject as personal opinion.

 

In this case, which says more or is more accurate to the process? "Photogenic drawing," or "photography"?

 

Would the image become something more if you called your work a photogenic drawing?

 

Fox Talbot was thrilled with photogenic drawing specifically because he couldn't draw or paint at all and wanted a way to express himself in a graphic form. Unfortunately for Fox Talbot - he really wasn't a very good photographer either as can be seen in the images found in his book, "The Pencil of Nature."

 

They are all rather mundane images - however, none of that mattered to Fox Talbot, as he was absolutely thrilled with the results; and his new found ability to make graphic images of the world.

 

For me personally, I think I'll defer to Gary Winogrand's eloquence on the subject:

 

"A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space."

 

"Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed."

 

"I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs."

 

"I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both."

 

And lastly, and possibly my favorite ---

 

"There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described."

Photography is promiscuous, whereas painting is more deterministic, even faithful.

 

 

When snowshoeing this sunny morning through freshly fallen snow in a nearby forest,

I stopped at least ten times to look at the reflections of plants and trees on the snow

and at the undulating sculptures of the snow and the patterns it made, while

reproducing in a more arbitrary or fluid manner the underlying topography (streams,

ditches, rocks, abandoned objects). There was so much to observe that it was hard to

decide what was most moving to me and what to photograph, from what angle, and

how close I should get.

 

 

My photography was promiscuous, like an explorer looking for something else

around the bend. I will almost certainly go back and spend more time with specific

subjects, as a painter would do with his or her chosen subject.

 

 

Painting, due to its nature, has to be deterministic (once the artist's observation and

imagination have come into play) and faithful to a subject, whereas photography and

its almost instant imaging, allows one a promiscuity of observation, choice and

experimentation.

"Painting, due to its nature, has to be deterministic (once the artist's observation and imagination have come into play) and faithful to a subject."

 

Only true if you're doing representational painting. How does that apply to abstract painting, color field painting, action painting, op art, etc. - basically everything that does not need to be "faithful to a subject"?

Hi Steve. I take your good points, but would add that (for example) abstract painting

is also highly deterministic. One of my professional painter friends from Toronto,

who occasionally exhibits here in the east, is quite involved in creating an equilibrium

of masses, colours and tones in her abstract paintings. She is not "faithful to her

subject" as you mention, but to my point of "faithful" where that refers to being

faithful to a (her) specific conception (not necessarily subject) as yet unpainted.

 

Sort of why I suggest that photography is more promiscuous than painting.

The well known writer, philosopher, Susan Sontag in her book from years back "On Photography",which is a philosophical examination and critique of photography "as art", equated photography with shopping. You see something you like and you choose it. Her point is that there is much less of anything innate and uniquely creative in most photographs when compared to a painting for example.

 

This photography as shopping comparison bothers many photographers as it challenges their assumption that they have created something truly original when they admire their work. Framed and displayed they appear as paintings and certainly reflect the talent and originality of the photographer but not nearly to the degree that a painting, for example, can provide in the way of being a genuinely personal expression. Paintings may reflect reality but no two painters will render the same subject in the same manner, even with the use of the exact same materials. Hand a saxophone to two jazz musicians and they will strangely produce two entirely differing tones from the exact same instrument. The same camera given to two photographers however will render the same subject almost identically; ie. one photograph will not necessarily be attributable to any particular photographer. While darkroom manipulation can then alter the image, the results can be very closely copied.

One can argue that the works of Ansel Adams, or Cartier Bresson may exemplify photography's uniqueness, however given the same equipment,in the same environment, and with the same darkroom methods, the results of these photographers work can be almost imperceptibly duplicated. Adams certainly spent years writing instructional books on how to duplicate his methods. Bresson's "moment" method can be seen in countless other works. As a painter and photographer, Bresson never considered photography to be a true form of artistic expression and he constantly downplayed its artistic significance and then stopped shooting. He never gave up painting.