Beauty and truth

The Vancouver art museum currently has an exhibition of the pictorialist photographers entitled "Truth and Beauty". I have spend the last few weeks slowly working my way through the very dense exhibition in small bits. I have also watched a PBS documentary on Alfred Stieglitz as a result of seeing the exhibition. I thought I would share some of my impressions from both of these. Stieglitz apparently said "photography is my passion, searching for truth my obsession" That resonates with me. What struck me most about his approach was that he moved beyond the obsession with the mechanism of making images and the emphasis on self conscious technical processes that dominated the late 19th century world of photography. It was a young medium and it seemed that most people were still stuck on the process. Stieglitz focused on the subject of his images and made beautiful images of beautiful things with the techniques to make them being a mere tool in the process of getting to what he wanted to express. It strikes me that we are currently again in a phase in photography where the technical mechanism has become more important than the subject with the advent of digital image making. I think we can learn some lessons from Stieglitz. Whether it is a digital negative and an electronic darkroom is secondary to the content of the image. Self conscious attempts to showcase the technical possibilities is merely that and will fade away quickly like all fads do. Making a memorable and lasting image has to touch something of the universal in the human condition and resonate with us on a much deeper and existential level. The second thing that struck me was the sheer beauty of contemplating the actual print. There is something mysterious in seeing a sheet of paper that was physically held by the photographers which we admire. The artifact is more than an image, it holds the memory and emotion of the artist in its fibers and slowly reveals it if we take the time. I fear that we are loosing something with electronic displays, their cold precision and their visual clutter. It struck me how dark most of the prints seemed in real life. I think that our perception of colour and light is shifting with illuminated displays on LCD and plasma screens. We are getting used to images that glow and shout at us with super realistic and intense colour. We consume these images like fast-food without even tasting what we consume, flipping from one to the next with utter ease and barely looking at what we see. When we look at a print it can seem flat and dark in comparison. But we are mistaken, there is a subtlety in the printed photo which is difficult to describe, in the same way that a good bottle of wine or single malt has a subtlety that it reveals only to the educated palate. It does not shout, it whispers, it is about quality instead of quantity, about craftsmanship and passion and taking time to create something that reveals beauty and meaning. It is subtle and refined and it demands that we slow down, contemplate it and absorb it. When we do it has the power to inspire, uplift and change us.