"The tools open to a photographer in terms of transforamtion are pretty limited, and only really only allow us to "transform" what we are recording by realtively small degrees and not really in substance."
this is the old discussion of whether photography can be considered a plastic medium. some of the most convincing arguments in favor of it have pointed to the essentially infinite range of interpretations afforded through transformation. This demonstrated by the experiment of a room full of people to photograph the same flower. When comparing the range of expression possible through drawing vs. the range of expression possible through photographing, you are comparing two infinities.
however: even this argument concerns itself only with straight photography. the photographic process offers unlimited means of manipulating the world, many of which go well beyond transformation. These include, of course, photographs of any subject that is created or manipulated for the camera. Think of Julia Margaret Camerron, Man Ray, El Lisitsky, Joel Peter Witkin, Pavel Pecha, Francesca Woodman, or even Harold Edgerton.
Even the idea of trying to apply composition to photography strikes me as strange ... Berger makes the point that form and composition are not the natural domains of photography, but it always struck me that they are inseparable from photography. As Szarkowsky once commented, photography is the one medium where form and content are synonymous (I would say music is another example; the closeness of photography and music is one thing Berger and I agree on. Stieglitz too ...). The act of photographing, in the straight sense that Berger limits himself to, is the act of using the photographic frame (physical and temporal) to bring form to a subject. Berger suggests that we merely record the subject, but I think he's too quick to dismiss the HOW of recording a subject, and the ways we judge a picture, and the role that form plays in bestowing meaning upon the subject.
His assertions that photography has no language of its own (as painting does) and that the formal arrangement of a photograph explains nothing (in other words, photographic form=decoration) suggest to me that he hasn't looked hard enough at enough different kinds of photographs.
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