Why do People Have Trouble Seeing Photography as Art?
In some ways, photography is to visual artists what piano is to musicians. I can get you to play a somewhat accurate rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb in about 2 minutes, and if it isn’t in tune, that’s the piano’s fault, not yours. Similarly, if you have a camera, you can create an image in about two seconds, and if the image quality sucks, it’s probably the camera’s fault, not yours. But have you ever tried playing a bowed instrument? I did, for over a year. I doubt I ever actually played a note in tune, and my tone quality bordered on unlistenable. Drawing is similarly difficult; my first two years of drawings are generally not good.
But with piano, tone and pitch are not your fault, and photography doesn’t require you to create the image from scratch, only capture it. This means the bar to entry is super low. There are a lot of people taking photos who call themselves photographers, and a lot of them aren’t any good at it yet, because producing an image with a camera doesn’t actually require that. But that doesn’t mean photography is easy, in the same way that no one assumes becoming a good pianist is easy.
The difference between being an amateur pianist and an amateur photographer is that when you’re a pianist, people assume you have real skills, whereas with photography, you know, anyone can do it. And while this isn’t strictly false - anyone can do it - it definitely misses the point.
With playing an instrument, I think what a lot of people see is the physical difficulty involved in playing the instrument, which is very evident. But the musicianship, the maturity in the interpretation of the music, all of that other abstract artist nonsense – I think those are things less likely to be noticed or understood by the average person. Photography, as an art form, has little physical difficulty to it, in my opinion. Much of the skillset falls into this areas of abstract artistic nonsense, which I think is much harder for a random person to appreciate.
Photography, at its core, is about learning to see. This can mean multiple things: it could mean seeing moments that go unnoticed; noticing interesting juxtapositions you may have glossed over before; zooming in on details that seem banal when part of a whole; or even reinterpreting everyday scenes to introduce some interest or expose beauty that wasn’t noticed before. Yes, composition, framing, and technical camera operation skills like choosing an appropriate shutter speed or depth of field are important. Photo editing skills are important. But I think what separates a mediocre photographer from a good or great one is the level at which the observational skills have been honed, and the ability to translate what has been observed into a visually intriguing image.
The problem, of course, is that it’s difficult to imagine a concrete procedure for improving that skill. It doesn’t even feel like a real skill; it’s just abstract perception nonsense.
You know, I feel like there might be a common theme with people who deride things like photography or abstract art or pure math. I think some people are just really uncomfortable with abstract ideas or abstract thinking. Of course, this is problematic if you’re trying to understand art. But it’s more broadly problematic as well. How are you supposed to be good at solving any challenging problems if you’re not willing to consider thinking abstractly?