romme
pictures on canvas
Since the advent of photography, it has been negated by most as an artform with the ludicrous thought that all you have to do is aim the camera and push the shutter, photography is always mentioned as being separate from art.
The reality is that photography is as much an artform as painting or any other form of expression or communication.
In many ways, photography and painting are very similar, in other ways they are very different. Both have their inherent challenges, but photography can be as difficult as painting and sometimes more so. Each is a two dimensional creation, each uses composition and design and each takes varying amounts of time to create. Like painting, photography is a very lonely, solitary profession, only one person at a time can create a photograph, only one person at a time can look through the viewfinder, only one person at a time can make the final print with all the decisions that entails.
Painting starts with a blank canvas, a palette of paints, a brush, and the artist's skill. Painting requires the artist to create or copy from life, or from his/her imagination. A painter is free to choose which elements in the world excites him and which will be used or discarded from the paintings.
The photographer is challenged by the entire world. Photography is a process of selection and elimination much more than painting. One cannot move a tree that is in the way, so one has to use the viewfinder to find and select the best composition to include the tree in the picture. It's also a process of waiting for the right thing to happen, as in reportage, for the animal to make himself seen as in wildlife, waiting for just the right light as in nature.
Photography is a process of creating the light with artificial means if it's too dark or when shooting in the studio. It's a process of interacting with models and actors to achieve a look, a feeling, an emotion. It's a process of looking for the unusual, from point of view to detail, of being aware of all the things in life that we pass by every day and making the viewer notice them. A wall is not a wall, it's brick and mortar, it's stucco and graffiti, it's tiny insects who make their homes in the nooks and crevices, it's the mountain for a vine to climb, it's the prop for a man to lean on
