How free is photography visually speaking?

Hola Juan
Photography is as free as the painting, in both cases have different techniques and styles and thus different techniques.

Painting and photography are practically the same, each with its advantages, but all can do either.

For example, a surrealist painting has many fantasy elements, in photography would have to make use of many wires to hold all the magic you want to put in photo or make use of publishing techniques and computer.

If we talk about portrait, painter use (most times) natural lighting and put in front of the subject, in the photograph is the same, speaking of studio photography lights and will subject the same way, etc.

I believe that photography is as free as the painting, one must recognize that each style is necessary to use tools. (Computer, photographic enlarger, negative or files) (brush, spatula, sponge, oil hard or soft, solid or wet technique, etc).

When I studied art at the art school I realized that every artistic representation can represent the same thing as another, the painting has to take advantages of photography and photography take advantages of painting, and to compete with these advantages should use tools.

Regards
 
Photography will always have some connection to technology and never be quite as free... evidently painting can be done by elephants. Tichy was a fairly free photographer but he was still tied up in equipment.
 
When I was half my age I was enlightened by photographs that decidedly made a direct use of unusual techniques ranging from optical to chemical ones... I did all sorts of things that could make the forms empire rise over content as in a youthful and desperate desire of demonstrating myself photography was a white -and modern- canvas too... After years passed by, form first and then composition began to seem to me less attractive, less a photographic domain in depth... I feel my soul has been wanting more and more to find freedom in the ways content is treated only... Maybe I've become old and bitter... I'm glad photography is such a huge word allowing all of us to enjoy the same dreamy roads in different moments of our lives...

Cheers,

Juan
 
Photography will never be as free as painting as long as it relies on the laws of physics to make pictures. A painting can be a picture of ... anything. A photograph must be a picture of something that fits in front of the camera.
 
The camera as a delimiter or in an inclusionary function. As with such things, so much depends on the mind, body, and soul behind the lens. Sometimes I think the old questions remain because they are for the most part unanswered.

Currently enjoying the viewpoint of a new 15mm f4.5.

Casey
 
Chris101 said:
Photography will never be as free as painting as long as it relies on the laws of physics to make pictures. A painting can be a picture of ... anything. A photograph must be a picture of something that fits in front of the camera.
Click to expand...

Ah, but on the other hand, painting is limited by the painter's imagination, skills, and experience. Photography is not. As long as the photographer is there to witness a scene -- which could be more incredulous, majestic, serene, or terrible than human imagination -- a photograph can be made.

They are both limited and freed by different constraints.

From another angle, I think there is a tremendous amount of freedom once you are at the printing stage in photography, which is the "craft" part.
 
Imo painting is essentially an introverted pursuit, photography is purely extroverted. A painter can draw from pure imagination or use an outside object but still interpret it with imagination. Photographer is fully bond to the subject, which is always external. In other words a photographer cannot photograph his own imagination, he can interpret it by using outside objects but that never works and almost always fails. A good example of this is photographing of objects which otherwise are not photogenic in classical sense. for example a banana peel on the street. to one photographer it could mean something because it somehow stimulated his imagination but for others its just a banana peel. the same way photos of family members and pets mean a lot to the photographer but not to those who don't know those people or might not share the same liking for a certain pet. I remember an amateur photographer who mostly photographed garbage cans... Now a painter could get away with painting a banana peel or a garbage can but for a photographer its tricky.
 
I think the photographer's biggest hangup is the belief that one is recording reality, because the result resembles what we understand as reality so accurately. When the result shows us something we previously didn't recognise as reality, then photography becomes picture making, like painting, ie it becomes art. Quite how this happens is something of a mystery, as it is for painting.

Just my 2p's worth.
 
I wonder if similar debates took place when painting was (re)invented in its history.

"Story telling is limited by story teller's imagination. Are we OK with someone painting the Satan eating his son's head off because art should be free?"
 
A photographer's starting point is objective reality, which I consider both the strength and limitation of the medium. A painter can start from there as well, but also from a completely subjective, internal place.

For me the goal is to not lose touch with the reality of what is seen, but at the same time to transcend the literal and suggest something more. I think we usually have more than enough freedom to accomplish that. And I think this is the wonderful place where photography become poetry.

John
 
Painting is about what to include and in my mind photography is about what to exclude to focus attention on what you want to communicate.

I think if you asked this question to Gary Winogrand, he would say photography is as free as you allow it to be and that you have to tear down the conventions of composition and technique and focus on what you want to communicate and the moment. Sally Mann would have a different perspective entirely.

I think ultimately, it all depends on what you are trying to do. All artists struggle with their medium of choice to try to morph it into their vision of what they want to do.
 
Maybe photography's freedom lays in a different place... We can do things to produce images that look different -visually- from reality, but to me it's forcing things a bit... As Winogrand said, that double act of honesty photography is -to reflect a real scene only, and to reflect reality just as it is- becomes more and more important to some of us... I can only talk about me: I liked photography as a wider field years ago, but it's been changing year after year and now feelings and real life is what calls my attention, a lot more than visual vanguard or landscape or urban composition... From this point of view is the way concepts are treated and exposed where I feel there's space for freedom inside street shooting: an emotional field more than a visual field...

Cheers,

Juan
 
What is the reality of a three dimensional world unbounded by the confines of a viewfinder translated into the two dimensional world of a photograph that ends up as an 8x10 print or a 72 dots per inch image on a computer monitor? it is an illusion of reality. To me, the fact that it is already an illusion frees up a lot of constraints in my mind.
 
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In painting the creator defines the image, in photography the creator reflects an image in many ways already defined by reality, and subject to optical limits and also time limits.

In painting, the style is related mainly to the form, and a lot less to the content...

In photography, the style is related mainly to the content, and less to the form...

I think the quality of freedom is different on both, and also the quantity...

Cheers,

Juan
 
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