On Reality in Photography
Wolf | August 6th, 2009 - 16:11It has been argued that all photography represents reality. After all, photography is only the reflected light captured in the fraction of a moment. The camera never lies. But is this really true? And if it is true, where is the art in it?
Photographs are not created in an instant. They are the result of a number of activities – constructing the scene, composition (framing), arranging the lighting, setting the exposure and pressing the shutter release button, not to mention the various tasks that need to be performed after the actual exposure.
The photographer has a choice in each of these steps. He decides what is real at the moment of performance. He decides what his message is and how it is to be communicated.
This reality may differ from the reality, when the finished photograph is viewed.
The question arises: which aspect of a photograph is real? The photograph as an object (the piece of material on which it is represented) or what it depicts?
When I first set out to use photography as a way of expressing myself, reality was an important issue. I wanted my photographs to be authentic and not altered in any way.
In a photograph, there is always the chance of a tiny scratch that marks a negative or a spec of dust on the enlarger lens or nowadays the image sensor, which are visible in the photograph’s printed representation. Conventionally, this is perceived as a flaw and dealt with by way of retouching.
My answer then was to leave all the tiny scratches and dustmarks on the negatives so that they would show in my prints.
In doing so, the photograph itself became the piece of work and the true reality, not the scene that it had captured.
The marks (dust and scratches) were intentionally left, real and wanted, but still incidental.
Later, in 1982 when I had already abandoned this approach, I created a series of photographs, into which I deliberately introduced flaws – dust and scratches. The thinking behind it was the same: The photograph itself is the work of art, not what it depicts. Thus, only the photograph itself is real. This has implications on digital photography, where no physical original exists.
“Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (1928/29) – René Margritte’s painting of a pipe stating that the pipe in the picture is not a pipe explains the point. It is not a pipe – it is a painting of a pipe.
My claim that the object itself, not what it depicts, is the work of art is not a new concept even in photography but it shows that some issues in the philosophy of art are of continued interest and relevancy.
The issue of reality in photography continues to occupy my interest. I have demonstrated in another essay (“Photography and Realism, or The Trouble with Reality”, 2006), using two famous reportage photographs from the Vietnam war, that a photograph requires an emotional response from the viewer to become real. Only then will it reveal the whole truth.
It is this emotional response (my own and the viewer’s) that interests me today in my photographs, not least because it makes the viewer part of the creative process.
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