Fine Art Photography is not a Jigsaw Puzzle

Fine art photography is as diverse as photography itself, although its definition and limitations are not so universally agreed upon. The heart of the definition has to do with the photographer’s intention.  Which is somewhere beyond a recording of details, (e.g., color, shape, direction, perspective, depth) and more towards expressing a message, usually of an emotional nature. That is where the attractive and pleasing factors of a photograph’s appeal lies.

Fine art photography can range in description from exotic to mundane with subject matter from the everyday to the extraordinary. Streetscapes, landscapes, ballet dancers, architectural details, a clown’s smile, a child’s sticking up hair – fine art photography is unlike photojournalism, which records the event into an image to be shown as is, untouched, not manipulated, and usually exhibited immediately in newspapers, magazines and websites. Also, unlike commercial photography, i.e., advertising, where the image is designed to persuade the viewer into buying the concept or the finished product, fine art photography is just that—art. 

Rather lofty and ambitious to suggest that it is art, no? Seeing as how photography itself is well over a hundred years old, is it not kind of bizarre to think that “Art” (sketches, statues, and paintings, etc…) has only taken photography serious since the mid 1950s? Photography is not a threat to fine art, even if digital photography is speedily convenient and instantaneous. Behind that lens and viewfinder there is still much work and creative imagination involved. Not confined to either realism or abstraction, nor a choice of either a studio or the streets, fine art photography reveals as much or more than a labored over painting.

Think of an image.

Think of a photograph you have seen framed and hung on the wall—okay, not the wedding photos or the camping vacation snapshots left on the fridge since last summer. Perhaps there is a framed photograph hanging in your favorite restaurant, bank branch, jazz club, yoga loft, church lobby, art gallery, your teenager’s bedroom—the one beside her dresser she got as a present from her grandmother—maybe it is a tropical rainforest begging her to visit the twisted ruins of fallen trunks and mossed over trees or a beach vista showing a calming contrast of blues between the ocean and the sky. You know, that one picture on her wall that seems out of place with all the posters of rock ‘n rollers and those headshots of heartthrob actors. The one she secretly meditates on, hoping to walk through that forest or along that beach… if the image is clear, and free of typography proclaiming a great deal on airfare, perhaps there is quote underneath meant to motivate—that is fine art photography.

Perhaps fine art photography is: “those pictures that do not become jigsaw puzzles”. Art is really after all a reproduction. Even if the final product is a statue or a sketch or a blurry shot,
what was reproduced was the initial hazy, ‘blueprint’ idea from the mind’s eye or the muse, if that is what the photographer intended and if the intended message comes through and really connects with you—what more is there to say?