Wednesday, September 10, 2008

What is the added value of a photo? (continued)

In my earlier postings Photo vs. reality and What is the added value of a photo?, I pondered the relation of a photography to the existing reality and different art forms such as architecture.

Luminous Landscape has an interesting essay titled The Problem With Photographing the Beautiful and The Famous:

A photographer working with the wonderful buildings of Frank Gehry (he of Gugenheim Bilbao and Walt Disney Theatre) would, you might think, at best capture a simulation of the real buildings. But wait, what if the photographer captures angles, views, lighting and atmosphere which show the buildings as far more than what the tourists see.So the photographer uses reflections and shadows and the play of light on the building material to photograph a part of the building which results in a print that is a work of art. If the photographer shows me something of the building that millions of tourists don’t see, isn’t that a thing of value in and of itself?

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