If a key factor in distinguishing a good photograph from a bad one – or at least an interesting one from one that is not – is whether the photograph tells us something new about the visual world and how we understand it, or at least something that we thought we knew before in a better or novel way, then is aesthetics (or any other similar measure for judging photographic art (and by extension, any other art form to the extent that the same test applies)) nothing more than a type of epistemology? Stated differently, is visual art essentially an epistemological process?
The short answer is that it depends. The answer is largely a function of how one characterizes or approaches the photographic enterprise. If the goal of this endeavor is primarily “self-expression,” then the answer to this question should be no. Conversely, if photographic art is viewed as essentially an analytic and synthetic process, then the answer should be yes.
If there are (at least) these two possible approaches to photography as art, which one of the two is preferable? Recognizing that this question is itself a simplification, in that an analytic and synthetic approach to art seems to inescapably contain elements of self-expression, the arguments in favor of an analytic and synthetic approach are compelling. The analytic and synthetic approach has the potential to tell the photographer – and others, perhaps – something new, something interesting, about the external visual world. Why this, and not that. Why this is visually interesting and worth further exploration, even though it would ordinarily barely register in one’s conscious mind.
More particularly, the analytic and synthetic approach provides a way to explore how information about a visual scene “works.” By “works,” I mean how much information is in the visual scene, how information can be both discerned and transformed by a particular composition and how such information can be visually conveyed to a potential viewer. Unlike one’s normal, ordinary course vision, photography offers the opportunity to consciously select and emphasize. Every successful photograph is a statement, a proposition: this, but not that — and, at least implicitly, why. And by doing so, the photographer has the opportunity to communicate what is and what is not visually important, what is worthy paying to attention to, in any scene.
Conversely, using the photographic enterprise either solely or primarily as a vehicle for emotional self-expression often tells us little of interest about the visual world, notwithstanding appearances or claims to the contrary. Any such information that actually is conveyed is frequently a happy accident, at best. At worst, the desire to “self-express” the photographer’s views or emotional state results in a lack of visual clarity, and a concurrent absence of insight regarding the visual world. Moreover, insofar as there is a universality (and finite set) of human emotions, a photograph that simply expresses the photographer’s emotions or feelings tells us nothing new. Its value, aside from being a keepsake, is necessarily circumscribed. It may very well be important to the photographer, but that alone is insufficient to make it either interesting or important as a photographic image.
Equally boring is photography devoted to advancing a particular point of view about society or political position. This is not because such points of view are wrong (or right), but because they are obvious. The message sought to be conveyed may be worthwhile and it may even be important, both for the photographer and others (even for society as a whole) to undertake such efforts, but with rare exceptions such photographs are failures as art. A photographic image that is obvious, that is merely a cliché, tells the viewer nothing new – either about the world, about the visual process, or about almost anything that was not previously known before – and as such has nothing material to contribute as art.
© 2017 Lawrence Gottesman. All rights reserved.