The Online Photographer

Which artists would you think might be useful for photographers to know and study?

That was a question I came up with a few days ago, thinking of topics to write about. Trouble is, my list kind of stalled at...four. I was a little shocked that a cascade of names didn't drown my brain. The first three that I thought of immediately were Edward Hopper, Raphael, and Vermeer.

Then I thought of Caravaggio—Mr. Chiaroscuro—and that seems obvious, although I never liked him all that much. His paintings seem violent to me. When I was young I had this persistent sense that I could glean the artist's personality from their art, and when I didn't like what I sensed of the personality, I tended not to like or trust the work.

If ever a cover should not have a red banner across the
corner, it's this one.

After those three I started to run into one peculiar problem. My high school classmate Caroline's daughter, whose name I don't know, was a prolific drawer as a child. When her mother suggested she copy something, when the daughter was nine, she refused, saying, "never go from flat." I love that.

That is, when you're drawing, look at the three-dimensional real world and don't copy something that's already been reduced down into two dimensions by someone else or by some other means. This is a sensitive point with me, because I have a sense when I look at art of all kinds whether "there's a photograph behind it," meaning, the artists is painting or drawing from a photograph. With some art it's obvious, and with some it's almost like a faint shadow and I'm not sure of it. But I tend to like art better when it doesn't have that shadow of a photograph behind it.

It's a bit odd that Hopper is photographic in his vision, yet there isn't that shadow there. And sure enough, Hopper didn't "go from flat." He looked at the real thing and made sketches (many of them) and took written notes. So he might have been a painter who was influenced by photography, but he wasn't one who used photographs to paint from.

Even Vermeer, who died 164 years before the invention of the Daguerreotype was announced, might have been using the lens image as an aid for his painting, according to the (must-see) movie Tim's Vermeer.

Edgar Degas, Race Horses, 1883–85

The problem I ran into was that many latter-day and recent representational artists do have that shadow behind their work. Winslow Homer does; Eakins does, to my eye, although I don't hold it against him—I used to say that Eakins was actually a multimedia artist whose final works happened to be rendered as paintings. (Kind of half a joke, like a lot of my opinions about art.) It's easier to forgive artists who worked closer to the inception of photography; when Degas used photographic cropping in paintings, it was radical and new. A friend tells me that Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera is actually a very interesting book for us photographers, regardless of whether you like Rockwell. I love Jordan Casteel, but would someone look at her work purely to inform their photography? It seems odd to suggest that photographers should study artists to improve their photography when the artist might have used photographs to paint from in the first place.

Maybe what I really should do, rather than to compile such a list as I'm proposing, would be to read Secret Knowledge by David Hockney, which I'm rather shocked to find out is from 2006. (I still think of it as "recent.") It's about that very subject: artists who mediate their vision through or with the lens image vs. those who paint from direct observations of three dimensions, from imagination, or abstractly.

The book has always been a little too expensive for me, and I'm flat out of room for more books, sadly. (Half my reference books that I need for this job are already inaccessible in boxes in the attic of the barn. I'm shocked to discover just now (from Amazon's records) that I actually own Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera. It's in a box somewhere and I can't get to it, and out of sight, out of mind. You know what they say: oh well.)

I do tend to forgive artists who were also photographers, which includes Eakins. I have The Photographs of Thomas Eakins somewhere. And it includes the marvelous artist/photographer Saul Leiter whose photography work I cannot get enough of. And David Hockney himself.

Maybe one of my resolutions for 2024 should be to get Secret Knowledge from the library!

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

robert e: "I'm going to sort of sidestep the question and suggest studying the artists that move you (whether positively or negatively); just do it deliberately, i.e., with the goal of learning something applicable to photographs.

"Why? First, I think photographers can learn something from most any flat art, including abstracts. Second, there's a lot of art and your time is limited, so you might as well focus on the stuff that resonates personally, that you want to spend more time with anyway. And third, you might learn something about yourself, too."

David Dyer-Bennet: "My mental model is that the thing I could particularly learn about from non-photographic visual artists is composition. (I can of course also learn about that from photographers.) Not to say there aren't other things to learn; there clearly are, particularly if you start including retouching and restoration in 'photography' (because then lots of painting techniques or at least the understanding behind them become relevant).

"('Cropping' is another area where there should be plenty to learn; it's tightly related to composition, too.)

"And, for composition, whether I approve of their techniques or even of their results doesn't really matter, does it? If an image is widely thought to be first-rate, the composition must be at least 'okay,' and is very probably considerably better than that, right? So my looking to figure out how that works has reasonable chances of being enlightening? There's a certain feeling of superiority to be had from thinking you've learned from art you don't like, anyway  :-)  .

"I've been collecting examples and trying to make time to study them, off and on, for over a decade now I guess. Possibly I might even have learned some things."

Roger Bradbury: "Perhaps you should get rid of that funny looking table in the middle of the 'pool' shed, and fill the space with book shelves....  ;-)  "

Mike replies: Part of the original plan: low bookshelves around the edges that cues would clear the top of. Alas, it's not big enough. The room on the floor is needed for footing. The pool shed is big enough, but barely.

A library is actually a perfect room for a pool table. Shelves on all the walls, pool table in the middle. But the room has to be big enough. Take a look at the basement this house in the town I'm thinking of moving to. Very few small houses have any space that is truly big enough for a full size pool table. You need about 19x15 feet clear of any impediments. It's rare to find. I would deal with the less than ideal kitchen, which is probably what's keeping that house from selling.

Oops, am I talking about pool again? I'm not supposed to do that!

Bob Keefer: "I'm going to sidestep the question slightly and suggest a different way for photographers to learn from the classical art world. When people ask me what's the best class to take on photography, I recommend they sign up for a good drawing class. Learning to draw what's in front of you from a decent instructor develops your ability to see the world carefully and accurately, to see what is actually there as opposed to what you expect to see. You also learn about composition and tonal structure of images. Drawing doesn't require talent—only regular practice—and it can deeply change your view of the world and of art."

Len Salem: "Mischievous me suggests that any book by or about any artist you like is worth studying if your intention as a photographer is to express yourself and how you feel about things. Because what, as photographers, many of us need to think about is our intention in making images. Getting to grips with the thought processes of an artist might be valuable help for understanding this. Learning the technique(s) necessary to express that intention is a separate study, and possibly one about which it is easier to become informed or recommend resources."

Hank: "I ran into a Bonnard exhibition during one of my travels a few years back—I think it was at the Tate—and I was struck at how 'photographic' his paintings were. A little research later showed he was a keen amateur photographer."

Mike replies: One of my favorite books is a book of Bonnard's photography. They are not "good," nor do they look at all like my own photographs, but for some reason they just grab me right at base level. Kind of like Howe Gelb's music. Thanks for mentioning him!

Jim R: "When working in color I tend to think of Maxfield Parrish when taking landscape photos after sunset, and William Turner and Hudson School of Art painters when there's water in a scene."

John: "Picasso was supposedly challenged about his distorted representation of an individual—likely his latest mistress. Picasso then asked his interlocutor whether he was married, and if so, did he perhaps have a photograph of her? Out came a wallet and a small snap handed over. 'She’s very beautiful. Such a shame she’s so small, flat, and grey.'

"To Adam Isler’s list of painters, I would add Durer, especially his Great Piece of Turf (Das große Rasenstück); and, George de La Tour, 'The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds,' in the Louvre collections."

Tom Burke: "It would have to be 'realistic' painters, I think. So, for example, still life and genre paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, would inform photographers of similar subjects. And portrait paintings, surely—again, Dutch masters, as well as artists such as Lawrence and Gainsborough. And then there's Joseph Wright 'of Derby.' If you want chiaroscuro without the violence, e.g. 'A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery'. It would be challenging to tackle a subject with that much dynamic range with a digital camera and try control it...."