Photography as Art

About 4 years ago, I wandered into the old FW Modern Art Museum. This alone was a big deal for me. I was trying to do more things by myself, having recovered slightly from my divorce. I had never been very brave about going places alone, but I figured that museums were a good place to start. I'll never forget that day or the experience I had. I initially went there to browse their permanent collection of paintings. I took a wrong turn and ended up in their photography exhibit. I had never really gotten into photography, except for the Ansel Adams nature prints. But the pictures grabbed me and didn't let go. Most were black and white, some were of structures, like water towers (a series by Bernd and Hilla Becher), some of people's faces, or places I'd never seen (Laura Gilpin, in her series on the Southwest and the people who live there.) But they seemed to all have energy. I stayed over two hours that day, wandering back to my favorites and jotting down names on a little spiral notebook I had in my purse. Ever since then, I've loved going to photography exhibits.

I went to a lecture at the Amon Carter Museum where speakers were discussing different aspects of the color nature photos of Eliot Porter. The first speaker was an expert on the Sierra Club, who had used some of Porter's works in their battles to save wild places. He was discussing whether or not this was exploitation of the art, or of the nature it depicted, or both. The second speaker, and my favorite that day, was a professor of art history who contrasted and compared Porter's work with the black and white works of Ansel Adams, and the pop culture history that led up to the dramatic switch in photography from black and white to color. She also discussed about the fifties being the first era that began to consider photography as art.

But all of this was followed by a fascinating question and answer session at the end of the lecture regarding this issue of photography as art. Several members of the audience starting asking some great questions. Can it still be considered art if the photographer in any way "sets up" the picture beforehand? And what about the prints that are sold as "originals"? How do we know that a print came from the original negative? And what about the emergence of digital photography? There's so much editing you can do - will museums one day have exhibits of digital photos? Obviously, this was just on the beginning cusp of digital camera mania.

I don't have the answers to all of these questions, I just know that I love to look at the pictures taken through other people's lenses, and experience their vision. I like to wonder about the person in the picture-was he or she having a bad day? What had happened to them in life to cause them to have that particular expression on his or her face? Or with buildings - had it been abandoned long? What happened in history to cause it to look run down? For my birthday in a few weeks, we'll be going to an exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. It's called "Gordon Parks: Half Past Autumn". I've never heard of him, but I can't wait to see what he has to show me.