A banana duct-taped to a wall has been sold for a hard-to-stomach $120,000 at Art Basel Miami
Why even try to express what it is that makes art art? If a duct-taped banana can sell in the six figures the following exercise is not worth your time trying to find out. I suggest that you do what one of my friends did when he watched the show “Mission Impossible.” He accepted the premise so he never watched the show. If we can’t figure out what it is that separates a “pic” from a portrait, a snap from a work of art, then you’re wasting your time ingesting my humble words. Miss Manners is still being published. Go read Miss Manners.
It’s not bananas or manners for me, though. It’s images. What it is that elevates an image into something more than, as one of my exasperated photography students said after I gave him a five minute critique, “just a picture” is what I’m trying to do here. Some aren’t just “pictures.”
Hey, here’s a picture:
Blind man’s daughter reads the menu to her father
But that only tells a small part of the story. Here’s the rest.
Blind man’s daughter reads the menu to her father
Now it’s a photograph. Now it tells a story. The daughter reads the menu out loud. The woman in an adjacent booth hears the daughter reading aloud and being curious, turns around to satisfy her curiosity. There’s a story here. It tells the truth about life and about people.
Here’s another.
Young, confident, self-assured, and beautiful
But this is much more than a picture when you see the effect that the young lady has on another.
The caption reads “A New York iPhone photographer”. Now it’s not a photograph of just a young girl, but the effect that she has on another. And on me, too, as I saw their relationship as a photograph telling a story.
One more…
Lost in her own thoughts Isla looks out the window of a BART car.
Isla is still lost in her own thoughts. But the couple behind her are lost in each other, and the contrast between their affectionate relationship and Isla’s solitude makes this a photograph, not just a picture,.
Here’s a cat
You can find cat images everywhere. What makes this cat photo a photograph and not just another cat picture? Lighting? Composition? (Partly). What works here is revealing a truth about cats, in effect, telling a story about what it means to be a cat. The cat wants to climb on the window sill and look out the window. Whatever he has to do he does.
More stories, this time a couple of dogs…
Does this say anything about dogs? Or do his little pink shoes, the trailing leash, and the legs and shoes of his owner standing nearby tell a story?
This one isn’t just a photograph of a dog. It shows a relationship, too, between both the relative sizes of the two dogs and the comfort that the smaller one takes in the larger one.
Most fine art photographs stand on their own. In some cases the narrative that accompanies the Image enhances the experience, the appreciation, and the enjoyment of the image. Understanding that the blind man’s daughter is reading the menu aloud helps in understanding the image. In the following photograph the explanation below the image also enhances the experience for the viewer.
When Andrew’s first child was born in California Andrew was in Kathmandu.. Here he is arriving at the airport and seeing his son for the first time.
Photographers tire of the line from wannabe image makers “If I had your camera.” Having spent more than fifty years trying to create images that tell stories, I am trying to examine what really separates those wannabe photobugs from artists who use the camera as a means to create art. Telling stories is only one part.