The world of photography is in constant flux, with new technologies and new ways of working constantly emerging and coming into tension with those who, for one reason or another, tend toward a more traditional way of doing things. In a way, such debate is a good thing, because it shows the medium is still growing as a form of expression. Whether it’s good for a form of art to allow technological progress to dictate so much of its artistic considerations is another matter altogether. After all, you won’t see the painting art establishment having a massive debate or discussion over a new type of paint emulsion or brush. Or if they actually do, it’s too quiet to be noticeable.
One thing that might have caused consternation a decade or so back within the art establishment has gone on to become its own genre of art which is fairly well-received. I am of course referring to “digital art”, where technology is used to create new forms of expression, merging various older genres and media.
But going back to photography, the tension between the possibilities opened up by technology, and a sense of what constitutes the “essence” of photography leads to debates like “Should HDR be used?“, “How much retouching is too much?”, and recently, the contention by David Saxe that, essentially, manipulations in post processing, far from being an optional part of the process for a photographer, should actually be de rigueur as far as the photographer’s artistic expression is concerned.
The core of his argument is that those manipulations allow the photographers to communicate their passion and feelings in regards to the shot to the viewers.
It’s tempting for me to think that Saxe is only referring to art photography, but I think he is actually making a spectrum-wide argument for the whole of the photography genre. That includes, of course, photojournalism. And that opens up a whole other can of worms pertaining to questions like “To what degree can journalists insert their own subjective emotions into their work?”, “What service does it offer to a consumer of news in terms of representing reality if the documenting photo is manipulated?”, “How much of reality can be translated through the medium of photography anyway, give the technological restrictions and the restricted view of a single frame?”, etc.
There are those (like myself) who would argue that really, the very act taking a photo is the photographer’s way of communicating his or her subjectivity. There is no objectivity when as a human with my own aesthetic judgement, I compose a photo in a frame (cropping out elements, leaving elements in, emphasising elements with leading lines and positioning, etc), the decision to fire the shutter at that split second, the decision to blur or not blur the background with the aperture settings and lens choice, the use of shutter speed to blur multiple moments into one or freeze a man mid-jump. And when we start using our own lights, we are constructing a reality that only exists in that 1/160th of a second. And lighting, of course, can have a massive effect on “reality” as it is perceived in a photo.
To a degree, the journalistic tradition has had to deal with such issues for a long time. We may try to be objective about “reality”, but the fact that journalists need to observe and write about events already sees that “reality” translated through the subjective lens of his/her consciousness. So journalists attempt to be objective, even while knowing that true objectivity is not a possibility. The best they can do is to not consciously introduce bias.
Given the possibility of such a wide range of expression available to the photographer during the capture of a photograph, the question that this poses for Saxe’s argument is whether in-camera expression is enough. My main issue with Saxe’s contention is the rather simplistic “either-or” argument he is making: a photographer is either “observing something, photographing it, and printing the image exactly as he or she saw it”, or they are taking “something ordinary” and making something “special” from it, through manipulation.
Saxe is trying to argue for photographers to take “ordinary photos” that reflect a reality which “everybody else sees”, and transform it by bestowing subjectivity upon it in digital manipulation. His argument against capturing a “quirky” part of reality is that seeking such shots confines photographers to “a formal, preordained plan or statement and the resulting images are no more than a checked-off list to suit that plan.”
That sounds to me like just an excuse to put less effort into getting your composition, timing, etc right in camera. It’s an attempt at shifting the personal expression of a photographer entirely into digital manipulation. Congratulations, you are now a digital artist, and that’s a distinctly different animal from a photographer.
Of course, I am not a traditionalist myself — I do believe in post-processing tweaks and digital development as a way to “finish” a photograph. I am also not disagreeing with the fact that digital manipulation can heighten the feel of a photo.
But at the same time, I take issue with the over emphasis on digital manipulation. I am a firm believer in getting the picture right in the camera. -Composition, lighting, background, etc are the foundations of a photograph. You can manipulate all you want, but if your foundation is crap, all you’ll end up with is some HDR’d, colour-isolated, overly vignetted eyesore.
Here’s the thing — digital manipulation is not the only way for a photographer to express their passion and feeling. Everything I mentioned above (and I keep mentioning them) are the tools and language for our expression. For me, light is the biggest tool. Some people can make the subject stand out from a murky background through the use of dodge and burn. I can express the same through judicious use of flashes, pre-visualised and set up during a shot.
While I may not count myself within their ranks, photographers who choose adhere to minimalistic use of digital manipulations are not restricted to just showing “this is what I saw”. They see a scene, they see the possibilities, and they transform that reality in their frame to express themselves. The tools at their disposal may not be Dodge, Burn, Solarisation, Saturation, or Vignetting, but they are equally, if not more powerful.