Does photography add anything to a subject?

[Craig Griffiths]

I have been reading “A philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful” by Edmund Burke of late, and came across a comment that has me thinking especially if you substitute photography for painting and drawing.

Burke writes “If I make a drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects; but…….my picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape would have affected in the reality.”

Granted that some people can see more in some scenes than others and focus on different parts of the same scene, but can they ever see more than is actually there?

So my contemplating mind has got to thinking. Does photography simply reflect the beauty that already exists, or can it add to a subject.

[BarryS]

Based on only that comment, I'd say Burke demonstrates a fundamental inability to understand art. By it's nature, art is highly interpretive.

[domenico Foschi]

Barry's one line comment more than efficiently expresses my own thought as well.
This stays to testify that Art and Reasoning are deeply incompatible.

[Craig Griffiths]

While I agree with Barry and Domenico, I am a little confused (nothing new I must admit).

Doesn't art only represent beauty that already exists in the subject, even if that beauty is not immediately obvious? How can a piece of art add beauty to a subject if that beauty doesn't already exist.

[Walter Calahan]

Photography can't add anything. It is a subjective reduction of the light striking something, so less than the whole scene.

[lenser]

Photography, as in simply pointing the camera and tripping the shutter, is unlikely to add a great deal. But, the subjective eye and skilled interpretation by the artist, no matter the medium, is capable of adding dynamically to the vision of any place, person or object that appears in the work.

As stated simply and brilliantly by Justus Dahinden, a Swiss architect: "It's not the camera. It's the eye."

Burke my have been a brilliant philosopher, but it seems he lacked a sense of vision.

Tim

[Donald Miller]

I sometimes think that we photographers tend to believe our own press entirely too much. The fact remains that our interpertation of an object or subject is simply that...our interpertation...to believe that we are imbued with a magical ability to see what others can not see is simply incomprehensible to me.

Everyone other than a blind person can see everything that we each see. Others may not avail themselves of the same opportunity but that does not mean that we have an ability that they do not have. That would seem to indicate to me that it is a matter of choice rather than a different ability.

The camera and film are simply incapable of depicting anything more than a crude representational substitute for the actual object or subject.

I would say in closing that art is indeed an empty shell if one believes that it is only about beauty. Art is about life...all of life...it's ugliness, it's sadness, it's joy, it's horror, it's pain, it's triumph, and yes finally sometimes even it's beauty.

[BarryS]

...

Doesn't art only represent beauty that already exists in the subject, even if that beauty is not immediately obvious? How can a piece of art add beauty to a subject if that beauty doesn't already exist.

Photography can't add anything...

Art *always* adds something.

Imagine Irving Penn's beautiful photographs of cigarette butts. Perhaps you'll tell me that Penn has only revealed the intrinsic beauty of the cigarette butts. However if you grant the intrinsic beauty of disgusting gross cigarette butts, then you have to grant it to every object in the world, the universe. If everything is beautiful, the concept collapses--beauty describes nothing. I think Penn created that beauty.

[domenico Foschi]

"If everything is beautiful, the concept collapses--beauty describes nothing."
Barry, could you expand on this concept?

[BarryS]

Domenico-- Aren't all adjectives descriptive of *select* qualities? Some foods are flavorful. Flavorful means nothing without the opposite qualities of bland and tasteless. If every food is flavorful, then what use is describing anything as flavorful? Big doesn't exist without small. Everything can't be big.

Beauty can't exist without existence of the non-beautiful. It's a quality in opposition to other qualities. Therefore, not everything is beautiful. We have empirical evidence that artists (including photographers) have produced beautiful images of a vast number of objects. They cannot all be beautiful, therefore in some cases, the beauty had to come from the artistic process.