Beauty that is raw vs cooked, wild vs domesticated

Nina Akamu’s “American Horse” (1995) from Da Vinci’s drawings on view at Meijergardens.org (toy camera)

That “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is widely accepted and experienced, too. So when it comes to a photo of something of beauty, the finished picture can do justice to the original subject’s own wondrous form or instead the picture can fail to communicate the feelings one might have in the direct experience of being there. If photography is a pane of glass and its frame to see a person, place, or thing, then is it perfectly transparent or does it add some enhancement; does it remove or obscure something; or both – much like a translation from one language to another inevitably involves surplus meaning layered into connotations and also the reverse, deficit meaning that fails to come across in the new language. In other words, in the relationship between lens and subject, photographer and field location, how much of the resulting picture’s effectiveness comes from the photographer’s treatment and interpretation and how much is inherent in the subject, regardless of who points their equipment at the thing? Put another way, when there is an artistic masterpiece to photograph, will all pictures be equally artful? Can a masterful photographer make a meaningful picture with inferior gear or by approaching any subject, no matter how ordinary, with an artful eye?

This photo comes from a toy camera with very limited ability to record wide-ranging light values (fixed aperture) and locked focus, rudimentary framing window, and tiny photo sensor. The giant bronze statue is a work of art to be seen from all angles and in all seasons, inviting the visitors to the sculpture park to engage with its many facets by walking under and around, viewing from near and from a distance. The viewing experience in person is altogether different to seeing any number of portraits of it from various angles, cameras, and lighting conditions. One experience is in real time as clouds come and go, the wind sighs, and the hub-bub of others drifts on the air. The other experience is silent and two-dimensional as a frozen moment. Recording the subject as video — either from a fixed spot on a tripod as time passes, or by walking around the sculpture to convey its many sides — is something like the in-person experience since the sense of time passing and the audio channel is included. But the question remains about the visual experience: how much of the impression on one’s mind is inherent in the subject and how much comes from the way a photographer communicates this subject’s beauty; a reporter of the event rather than the raw, unprocessed, non-articulated event itself. Put another way, is a well-done photo of a beloved painting purely a facsimile to the real thing; a derivative echo of the source? Or can the photo, somehow, be equal to or better than being there in front of the actual artistic subject?

Beauty of rose, of window light, of frame that isolates subject from surroundings – which is primary?

An old distinction from Biblical studies is between the Greek love for analytical divisions, such as Form and Content, on the one hand, and the ancient Jewish refusal to abstract the form and its content. In other words, this view says that form only exists when there is content; content only exist when there is form. Separating one from the other may be intellectually stimulating and the basis for hypothesis-testing, but in a relational sense, you only can know the thing by embracing it all together, not in layers of distilled abstraction. So perhaps this discussion of the photographer’s value added to subjects that are complete artworks on their own runs along similar lines: rather than to tease apart the visual experience of a photo to record an artwork (or a subject of naturally occurring beauty, like an ungilded lily or a sunset free from postprocessing enhancement), perhaps the viewing experience has to be taken at face value, as an object of visual engagement all of its own, no matter what appears in the viewfinder. This echoes the quote attributed to Garry Winogrand about his motivation for taking so many exposures in his street photography, ‘I photograph things to see what the picture will look like as a photo’ [paraphrase]. In other words, regardless of the original subject and any technique the photographer may apply, it is the printout in the end that matters: a two-dimensional representation to be mounted for display or to fly around the small screens of social media around the world. By this reasoning, the subject –a sculpture or painting, or performance arts; a random beam of sun on a street scene, or the shadows falling on one’s kitchen table– is the raw ingredient for the photographer to handle by choice of standpoint (subject, juxtaposition, context, frame of inclusion or exclusion), exposure, moment of shutter release, and so on.

Jumping to another metaphor, in the world of music there is separate credit given to composer, performer, and any particular (recording made of) performance. The same composition will sound differently depending on what orchestra performs it. And that orchestra will give a different effect when led by one conductor’s interpretation versus another’s. Even the same conductor and orchestra will have slight variation when performing on one occasion versus another; one venue versus another. From the point of view of audience, the music is the music. Unless they have multiple listening experiences to compare, this one engagement with the performing art will be the only source of stimulation to elate or dampen their spirits. The analytical distinction of composer, orchestra and conductor, performing venue and overall spiritedness for a particular iteration of the composition will be beside the point. To the audience, the experience will be a whole; a complete meal; a totalizing sensory experience.

The question about source subject (the composition and the circumstances of history and personality going into the composer’s work) versus interpretive nuance affecting the end result would be useless and unproductive to ask. Thus for a photograph as object of its own two-dimensional value, the criticism persists: that taking a picture of an artwork or a natural wonder is a futile exercise that should not “gild the lily” and that may well not do justice to the original subject. If photos of beautiful subjects (ad absurdum: for photos of great pictures made by self or others, historically or today) can only aspire to show the subject to simulate the direct experience of being there, then no credit is given to the judgement of the photographer to select best lighting, framing, focal length, and so on.

By way of summing up, let us return to the title of this article, beauty that is raw and beauty that is cooked; beauty that is found in the wild and beauty that is boxed and clearly labeled “this is a work of art.” Whether the photographer notices something beautiful about light, texture, color pattern, geometry, or moment of juxtaposition —all or any of these can motivate the person to record the scene for others to see or for one’s own recognition of significance in the occasion. The moment could arise by serendipity out in the wild of hustle and bustle or surrounding by natural quietude. Or the moment could arise by purposefully attending a gallery of 2-D and 3-D creations acknowledged to be expressing beauty. In both cases, planned or unplanned, it is the photographer’s visual experience of the subject that leads to a translation from the moment into pictures frozen in time for others to see at that time or lifetimes later on. By sticking to the end product, a flat representation made by optics and electrons or chemicals, the subject can be regarded as nothing more than the raw material about which the photographer spots an opportunity, develops the idea into a composition by considering various approaches, and finally releases the end result. In this way, it is not too important to worry that a picture of a piece of art is categorically of no lasting value because the subject itself is inherently beautiful. A bad photographer certainly can spoil the viewing experience by making an unflattering interpretation. A good photograph, though, successfully conveys something of the direct experience of encountering the art subject (or a natural wonder out in the world).

In conclusion, even though it is complicated (maybe futile or misguided) to disentangle the artful contribution of photographer to a subject of inherent beauty or wonder, surely that eye and hand of the photographer are present in the resulting print. Just as the ineffable lens art mostly involves invisibility of light and air and standpoint, so also does the role of the photographer involve ephemeral inputs like decisions about exposure, timing to release the shutter, choice of viewpoint and foreground and context framed. The medium is about transparency but also the art of the photographer is mostly invisible. The subject for composition can be made by artists in galleries or it can be made by geology and conditions of weather and nature’s rhythms. Either way, it is the photographer who puts the subject matter into a frame for all to appreciate.

Not rose-colored glasses, but a toy lens

Converted from color to grayscale, this toy camera photo resembles a Kodak Brownie camera shot (12/2023)

At 5000 Yen, this toy camera is not a big investment, but is similar to a pinhole camera in its effect. Viewers can study the image and finally know what it is. Unlike crisp, bright modern photos that the viewer can quickly identify, the less distinct lines, contrasty look, and poor shadow details of the toy camera require more effort to interpret. As a result the relationship between viewer and the photo is to feel more distance separating the person from the scene and its time in history. Even when the photo and the viewer occupy the same space and time, the monochrome version of the picture made with the toy camera lens seems to come from far away or long ago.

The expression, to see through “rose-colored glasses,” is used to describe a person whose interpretation of the world looks rosy. Rather than to see the true complexion of the situation, everything seems to look rosy when looking through spectacles like these. Perhaps the same is true for photos (video or audio) recorded with a lo-fi device like this Pieni II toy camera from Kenko Tokina. Everything looks to be long ago or from a distant land. In other words, no matter where the lens is pointed, the subject seems to take on a hazy, nostalgic look, as if it were recorded on a camera like the Kodak Brownie from 100 years ago or more. The effect is strongest when the original JPG is converted into grayscale, like the example, above.

Taking a wider view of this “rose-colored glasses” phenomenon, perhaps it is not just the choice of camera that affects how well-focused, accurately colored, and transparently accurately represented a subject is, but moreover there is a kind of tinted filter that each person has to see the events of the world. According to one’s worldview, upbringing, social status, gender, generation, age and so on the surrounding life and the opportunities (and risks) it holds will differ. Just as the toy camera can make everyday things look historical or appear to be from a faraway, unfamiliar place, so, too, does a person’s worldview affect the look of things – fatalistic, millenarian, secular, sacred, harsh or gentle. One’s culture and formative years put a filter or lens in front of each person and not all of these glasses are rose colored. The difficulty is that biases and tendencies may stand out in others, but perceiving one’s own patterns of seeing things (one’s own habits of thinking and worldview) are practically invisible.

This example of the toy camera lens affecting the look and feel of the scene is one way to show that visual experience is not objective or without some kind of non-neutral emphasis. There is some kind of emotional tone, whether it is intended or coincidental to the viewing perspective of one person compared to another. What seems plain to see for one person will not necessarily look the same way to another person.

Immersive photos in reverse

Thin ice on birdbath shows the dawn cloud colors, 22 November 2023

In the long march from Daguerrotype to glass plates to film exposures (negatives & slide/positives) and now digital, there has been an increase in convenience and faster pace to record and share the image with others. For 10 or 15 years, “how many megapixels” was the shorthand that many first-time digital camera buyers used to index or compare devices: the more pixels per image file the better. That is often true in many respects, but does not automatically make one camera better than another. And beyond specifications, there is the skill of the photographer to see and then record a composition. What “megapixels” indicates is larger image, more detail (granularity or higher degree of definition), and wider range in light values from dark to light (shadows show less electronic noise or stray digital artifacts when megapixels increase). In sum, each year’s new models were reaching closer and closer to human eyesight in terms of resolving power (sharpness) and dynamic range (healthy eyes are estimated to extend 14 f-stops in the range from deepest shadow to brightest highlight; 12 stops for good dSLR camera sensors). Taken to the natural conclusion, this progression to ever clearer photos could appear so immersive to viewers that the experience of looking at a photo is similar to looking through a window that one could virtually open and walk into the frame.

The immersive viewing experience is a particularly persuasive facsimile to lived environment when the angle of view is similar to the almost 180 degrees of human eyesight (panorama stitched or merged not from wide-angle lens but using a lens of ‘normal’ focal length). Photographed in color and taken at standing eyeball height, a photo achieving highest resolution (high definition) feels as if one could touch the subject in the frame. A few cameras produce stereographic images so that viewers wearing the 3-D glasses perceive depth and volume in the image, too.

What seems to happen as pictures become more and more vivid, lifelike, and immersive is that the psychological separation of viewer from subject nearly disappears. Almost nothing separates self from scene. That is a great visual pleasure when things are beautiful; that is a great distress when things are horrific. Something similar happens when a book is translated into a screenplay for live-action stage or cinematic adaptation. Instead of the reader slowly supplying meanings and visual connections to characters and scenes, now it is the screenwriter’s instruction that fixes the fabric of the plot, people, and places in one and only one, monolithic way so that all viewers can agree on the color, texture, light, and emotional temperature bouncing off the screen and into the audience’s minds and hearts. Imagination is displaced by storyboarding and keyframes.

Jumping back to the march of progress in picture-taking to accomplish an immersive viewing experience, it is worth looking in the opposite direction; away from immersive image captures. Reversing the image quality toward “lo-fi” (low fidelity) photography may also do something like the book versus movie interpretation: there is a reward for readers that movie watchers do not know. If “immersive” aims to be indistinguishable from the viewer’s own breathing space, then “lo-fi” aims NOT to be immersive and to clearly separate the viewer from the subject, thus forcing the person to look “harder” at the image in order to engage with it. Maybe that higher investment (for those patient enough to study the lo-fi picture) produces richer results in some regard.

Browsing the user groups at the photo-sharing webservice, Flickr.com, many of them bring together enthusiasts, amateurs, and professionals under group headings like lo-fi photography, pinhole camera, without a lens, and toy camera (low quality, low price devices to take photos and/or video). The interest groups constitute a relatively small but keen corner of the photography world. Some cameras are long-established and use film (Holga camera, Holga lens, Diana, Diana+, Lomo LC-A). Others are newer entries into this market for old-fashioned, slow-paced photography (Harman Titan 4″x5,” Zero Image photography, Auloma camera), and toy cameras with digital sensors like Tokina Pieni II (2022) and Gizmon Half D (2010). Another way to achieve a low-immersive, Pictorialist kind of expressive image (or video in some digital devices) is to set the camera filters or capture settings to “tilt-shift,” “toy photography,” or “lomographic.” And post-processing (or darkroom technique for film cameras and paper printouts) allows manipulation of a standard or high-definition picture so that it emulates the softer focus of pinhole, or the distortions of toy cameras, for example.

If one end of the photography continuum is “immersive” (inseparable self and scene represented) and the other end is “lo-fi” then most picture-taking and picture viewing is found somewhere in-between. Clear images of familiar subjects can be recognized and consumed in a momentary glance. But soft focused pictures of an unfamiliar kind require some study or patience to work out the subject and what it expresses in one’s own catalog of visual knowledge. In a fast-paced world of work, clients to please, and strangers of social media to amuse, “immersive” usually trumps “lo-fi.” But at least some viewers in certain occasions still find meaning in taking time to photograph and time to view pictures that seem to be the reverse of immersive ones. Interacting with a “lo-fi” image takes more time, but the result may be longer lasting in the mind of the viewer than a picture that is easily known and then forgotten so that the next one can be browsed. In the years ahead, the march of immersive picture is only going to become ever more immersive to tickle the senses more intensely. To get relief from that ocean of sharp images, perhaps the public appetite for “lo-fi” and more slowly encountered visual experience will increase.

In the same way that poetry satisfies relatively few makers and readers/listeners, so too of “lo-fi” photography. Not so many people have a taste for looking twice at non-sharp pictures, but those who do will be very keen, indeed. Or maybe “lo-fi” photography is visual poetry surrounded by the cacophony of high-definition, immersive pictures.