Photography is many things. It can be art, it can be a story, it can be a record. It can be ugly, beautiful, evocative, or plain.
However, to me, one of the most fascinating aspects of photography is the fact that it is a method of *direct visual communication*.
To clarify this term, I’m going to go on a pseudo-psychological tangent for a moment, bear with me!
Consider: Each and every one of us experiences reality differently. We perceive the world around us through the “filters” of our senses, and then our minds and our consciousness “process” this input into our “inner” perceptions, which becomes our unique experience of reality. Just as no two people’s fingerprints are the same, so to no two people’s perceptions are the same. One may argue the minutiae of this statement, but it is essentially a truism.
The entire idea of “communication” is to allow people to form a “common ground” by which everyone’s “reality” can be referenced. The most common way of doing this is through language – be it spoken or written. Words provide a description of one’s reality to another, in other words you can try and describe your subjective reality to someone else; however it is at best an indirect representation (ie words representing imagery).
Now consider – in contrast to this – that a photograph is essentially a direct, objective visual representation of one’s subjective experience of reality.
To explain: when one takes a picture, one is actually crystallizing their own experience into a tangible form. By the choices the photographer makes in lighting, composition, subject, and the way the picture communicates, the photographer is displaying how the world looks TO HIM (or her).
Instead of merely *describing* a visual experience, the photograph actually reproduces that visual experience to the viewer. It is almost like looking directly into the mind of another person, which is a fascinating prospect.
I believe this is the case, moreso than with any other visual art form, because a photograph is an exact replica of reality. The camera “sees” the world in much the same way that we do, and the photography is simply what it “sees”. Now of course a camera can be “tricked” and the photograph manipulated by various methods (lighting, dof, movement etc…) but so to can our own eyes be tricked. It is all part of the visual process. The camera is like a “third eye” except instead of transmitting images directly to our brain, it can transmit them to *anyone*!
The counterpart to this is the painting. Now in some ways they are similar – a painting is also a direct visual communication method, and a painting can even be “photorealistic”, much like a photograph. However, the fundamental difference with a painting is that the painting is *projective* – i.e. it is entirely dependent on the artists subjective vision, while a photograph is objective – it simply records what is there.
In this way, a painting is more about communicating the artists “inner world” to the viewier, while a photograph is more about communicating the artist’s *perception of the outer world*. It is a subtle, but meaningful difference.
As someone with a background in psychology, this is an idea that really draws me to photography. It seems to me that photography relates a lot to the “Theory of Mind” (Wikipedia link) as a way of bridging the gap between individual’s outer and inner perceptions.
In other words, to me a photograph is the ultimate declaration of: “this is the world as I see it!“
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