Interpretation is Art

An interesting thing happened this month.  It all started with three photographs being accepted for the Orange County Fair.  Two of them received awards.  That was exciting but the interesting thing was quite different.

Another unknown local photographer saw my photographs at the fair and started a string of messages on a website called ‘Chronicles of George.’  He carried on a conversation with a couple of other contributors, questioning whether the photographs were real.  They didn’t think the works originated from a camera and if they did they must have been ‘PhotoShopped to death.’  Here are some of the comments.

“I immediately became transfixed with the Cholla Garden print, as it just screams to me lithograph. I swear I stared at it for 10 minutes straight. Then I turn the corner and another "photo" catches my eye (the Split Rock Lighthouse) and then what to my surprise it is by the same entry. Now I really hit the roof and when I turned around there was [Zabriskie] Point #3, also looking like a print.

“Now perhaps this guy is truly a remarkable photographer and I know the talent is there to make photos look beyond realistic, but these three stand out to me like no other photos I've seen, and like I said, I've seen a lot over the years. I can't exactly explain, but they simply don't look like photos at all. They are stunning but I'm hard pressed to believe they originated from a camera.

“Hopefully this rant doesn't sound like sour grapes, because truly I don't begrudge the entries/winners at all. I recognize they are superior pics and marvel at their talent/luck/skill etc...”

His friend responded…

“Not really gonna /defend/ the work, as if he entered in any contests NOT as a professional, the judges should require that be pushed into the professional contest.”

This is all very flattering.  Wow, that my photographs could arouse such a passionate discourse is pretty amazing.

For the longest time photography was not considered art.  It took the early giants to demonstrate that the camera and darkroom were artist’s tools every bit as much as the paintbrush and canvas, chisel and mallet, pen and paper.

Carla and I frequently recall a line from a play we saw in the last year or so.

“Documentation is craft; interpretation is art.”

Many people who view my works ask, ‘Is that a painting?’ or ‘Are those colors real?’  Of course, they’re not paintings but the techniques I’ve developed make many of them look like they are.  As to whether the colors are real, yes they are.  I don’t change the colors but through a combination of taking the shot at the right time of day and ‘PhotoShopping them to death,’ the colors are much more apparent – and vibrant and lustrous.  One of the marvelous things about cameras is they help us see what our eyes miss.  We end up with my interpretation of the experience of being in that place at that time.

The interpretation of a subject or scene does not end when the shutter snaps.  It just begins.  Sometimes the process of interpretation feels like a sculptor interpreting a block of stone.  Do you know that Michael Angelo was the fourth sculptor to work on a particular block of marble?  It was handed down to him after three sculptors before him declaired there wasn’t anything inside that stone.  Michael Angelo took it and released David.  Writers of fiction often say that they don’t know how the novel will turn out and that the characters take on a life of their own and take over the story.  The same can be true of a photograph.

Often times, in fact, most times when I start working on a photograph I have no clear idea of where it’s going to end up.  I usually have something in mind but the photograph often has something else in mind and we end up in a different place.  It’s not uncommon to start down one path and get to the end just to say, ‘Nah, that’s not it.’  Then, all that is left to do is start all over again.  This can happen three or four times, maybe more, over the span of several months.  In fact in more than one instance this process continued for over a year.  When it finally all comes together the end result is something that is an expressive, personal interpretation of our beautiful mother earth.

The artists that judge the photographs at the fair awarded Cholla Garden an honorable mention and Split Rock Lighthouse 2^nd place.  During the fair they conduct the ‘Judges’ Walkthrough,’ in which the judges discuss the winners and the qualities that caused them to be selected.  One of the judges had many fine things to say about Cholla Garden, one of which was it didn’t look like a photograph.