What I really enjoyed about the first part of Berenice Abbott's article, Photography at the Cross-roads were her comments about how much photography has progressed and why. I think more than any other art form the photographic process is ever evolving and continues to improve with no end in sight and it is unique in that way. What is so great about its evolution is that everyone that has ever photographed, in one way or another, has had a hand in shaping what photography is today. Photography has had such an incredible impact on history pretty much since its invention because it has been something that nearly anymore could do and be apart of. An incredible community has been built around photography and it has been such a positive force in the development of the camera and the art itself.
I also liked what Abbott had so say about what photography is. Abbott claims that at its core photography is all about one word and that word is selectivity. I agree whole heartedly with that comment and I think what makes photographers great is their ability to be selective and make decisions on the fly. Photography is not like painted or drawing in the sense that you have tons of time to compose and produce your image and as you are doing so you can make selections and decisions as you go. In photography, when you are trying to capture a moment, a lot of the time you have to make a decision in a fraction of a second because the moment comes and goes just like that. Being able to train your eye and brain to make those decisions quickly and correctly is probably one of the hardest things to do and it is what makes great photographers.
3 comments:
Kaitrin Acuna
At first I agreed with what you said about photography evolving more than any other art form. It is absolutely impressive what we've been able to do from wet plate callodian images to mirrorless technology today. But maybe we just think this because we are photographers, and we don't know quite as much about other mediums. I'm certain musicians and dancers would probably disagree with us to some extent. However, maybe this photography progression seems so distinct because we are relying on the progression of technology, and not only the progression of techniques or ideas. (The introduction of new ideas has absolutely furthered photography too, but I'm not sure the pencil and paper has advanced as much as the camera and lens has). So I wonder if we'd feel the same way about this if the camera wasn't our chosen medium!
I agree with your view about selectivity. As a photography you have to make quick decisions because each moment only happens once and you have to think quickly about how you're going to compose that image. Trying to decide what to include in the photo and what to crop out is never an easy decision and the process of selection is extremely important.
Kaitrin, I definitely agree with you that perhaps saying that photography has evolved more than any other art form might be too broad of a statement. However I do believe that it would be correct to say that photography has evolved more quickly than any other art form. It has taken under two centuries for photography to evolve to what it is today, a relatively quick time when talking about evolution in art. For example it took until the 15th century to realize that oil paint was a great painting medium. So in terms of overall evolution, it would be hard to say definitively that photography is the most evolved (technologically maybe). But I would agree that photography takes the cake in terms of speed of evolution.
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