Chitpur Road, Calcutta, India © Bruno Trematore, 2007
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Photography and reality: the truth
July 19, 2010
We have art in order not to die of the truth
– Friedrich Nietzsche
I was listening at a conversation between a fine art photographer and a radio journalist in a gallery. The fine art photographer was telling that most of documentary photographers don’t like his work, because of the heavy way he uses Photoshop for his stuff. The radio journalist replied that he saw a photojournalist manipulate reality by moving objects and people, thus depicting relationships that didn’t exist in the first place. After this short duet, both agreed with the fact that in the moment that you frame reality with your camera, you’re not telling the truth anymore, because your picture frames only a small part of the world.
I heard this argument several times and I think that it’s junk. I will explain you why with an experiment:
In this moment you are looking at my words on your monitor. The monitor might be on a desk or on your lap or wherever it is. Just look at it. Is it real? Is it true? I assume that you are sane enough to answer “yes.” Now close your eyes and keep them closed for ten seconds, use this short time to think about the reality you just experienced, maybe talk to yourself as you wanted to describe it to a friend, then open the eyes again. Start now.
Welcome back! Is your monitor real? Yes, just as before. There might be some stuff or some people behind you. Did these people or this stuff play some kind of role in your inner description of reality? If not, does this mean that you lied to yourself?
A human being can’t produce a complete description of reality, because you can’t experience it in the first place. This doesn’t mean that a photo must be a lie. It can be, but it also can tell the truth. Yes, a partial one, but nevertheless the truth.
The purpose of art must not necessarily be that of telling the truth. It’s a choice, but I don’t like it when fine art photographers feel the need to justify themselves telling “also photojournalists lie.” Yes, some do, but there’s nothing wrong if you say: “my art is a lie, but I like it like this!”.
By the way, I never moved an object in any of my photos, nevertheless I liked the work of that artist.
Jaipur
July 11, 2010
This photograph just came up in my mind today. I thought I would process it again, make the gray scales look more similar to my recent photographs, but then I realized I should have gone through much more work than I wanted right now.
Jaipur, India © Bruno Trematore, 2006
Robert Frank, again
July 4, 2010
I found an interesting article on Robert Frank, that was published at the same time with the Steidl’s re-edition of The Americans.
Robert Frank contact sheet © Robert Frank
Funnily, this morning I was checking again the German law on photography (you can find it here, if you can read German). Each and everyone of these shots would be at risk of a charge if published. That was the good news, because Italian and French laws (just to name two countries in this continent) are even more restrictive.
It would be tempting to write about the direction that our societies are shifting towards, with people who would do anything to appear in TV but don’t want to be photographed and are still OK with state surveillance. The truth is that these individuals belong to different groups, so it’s not right to put them all together. Another point: the German law dates 1907!
One thing that changed for sure is the attention of the people towards photography, which is perceived as a mean of exploiting their image. Several are convinced that photographers float over seas of gold that they make with their pictures. Nice, isn’t it?
Sometimes I think that all that will remain of these last (and maybe coming) decades will be a bunch of photos of people saying cheese in front of the camera. I checked a few German newspapers recently (>1.000.000 copies per day) and the “daily life” photos that they publish are plain rubbish.
Anyhow, if you think that your life as a street photographer is miserable, read the article linked above, especially the part in which they describe the policeman who arrested Frank.