What Difference is There Between a Good Photograph and an Artistic Photograph?

In Camera Notes Volume III, No. 2 (October 1899) Robert Demachy, a prominent French pictorial photographer, discusses his artistic approach to photography.  Robert Demachy says “The answer to what difference is there between a good photograph and an artistic photograph is at first sight simple, however this is a dangerous error.”  An artistic photograph is much more than a good print from a good negative that has a carefully selected subject, composition, and lighting.  Demach states the nearly universal error is owed to the thousands of so-called artistic photographs with which our average exhibitions are crowded–photographs so much alike in their faults that they seem to be the deformed children of one and the same father.

Robert Demachy (1859-1936) was France’s best-known photographer of the Pictorialist era, exhibiting internationally and published many articles on fine-art photography.  Demachy was known as an experimenter that pushed the envelope beyond the obvious.  He was said to have shamelessly manipulated the image and experimented with etching techniques and printing processes that included oil and gum.

Robert Demachy states “No progress will ever be made in pictorial photography whilst photographers continue to rely on the above definition and refuse to use, to some purpose, eyes that seem blind to nature’s delicate nuances.  Let them go to the art galleries, seek the engravings, lithographs, chalk and charcoal drawings, let them bring their pet photographs for comparison, and they will soon acknowledge that correct composition–that is, composition devoid of such errors in lines and general balance as would many any subject displeasing–is no doubt necessary; that correct lighting, i.e., an arrangement of light and shade calculated to bring out the center interest of the composition, is also necessary; but that correct, and even good composition and lighting, such as are often found in photographs, go for nothing if they are not joined with true values, true tone, true rendering of texture, and what we call in French studio language, “une belle matiere”, that is, a pigment of such nature that it will allow of rich, transparent shadows and of delicate and fluid half-tones.

So we must alter the definition of an artistic photograph, as it is understood by nine out of ten photographers, and say that a photograph is artistic when it is correct in composition and lighting, true in values, tone, and texture, and printed on such a medium that it will satisfy the eye of the artist.

Is this asking too much of the photographer, composition, lighting, values, tone, texture, and medium?

We must realize that, on undertaking pictorial photography, we have, unwittingly perhaps, bound ourselves to the strict observance of rules hundreds of years more ancient than the oldest formula of our chemical craft.  We have slipped into the Temple of Art by a back door, and found ourselves amongst the crowd of adepts–alone and uninitiated.  Let us frankly discard our primitive errors–and learn”.

Tim

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Tim Layton

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