A different kind of purist
Everything in my last post withstanding, I do process my images myself and I do post edit, I also like to consider myself somewhat of a purist.
If you’ve read my last two posts, it becomes clear that I’m not a purist in the sense that I’m against all editing, cropping and what not. I’m not. I say: Bring it on! I’m a purist in the sense that I more often prefer photographs that look natural to me. I’ll get back to what that actually means in bit.
The traditional way of looking at pure photography poses an issue right way for me:
Founded in 1932 by Group F/64 (awesome name, by the way!) described it as a type of photography defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form. Now it’s more typically described as an attempt to depict a sconce as realistically and objectively as permitted by the medium, renouncing the use of manipulation.
This introduces many questions for me, many of which I’ve dealt with in this entry. Being a formalist, it isn’t in my nature to ever consider a photograph as completely objective, which doesn’t necessarily mean everything is some type of propaganda either, I don’t think it is. I do, like previously stated believe that there’s an element of choice in every picture frame, whether coincidental or not. This basically mean that to take an objective photograph one most posses the capacity to recognize perfect objectivity. I’ll bluntly throw out this statement: I don’t find that possible. Ranging into the world of philosophy here, just as perfect justice or even a perfect circle never can exist (Plato’s Phaedo, if I’m not mistaken), neither can perfect objectivity. As the definition states it aims for an attempt for objectivity, not stating perfect objectivity, I still find my feeling towards it justified, because who to say what’s objective or not. The feeling will always depend on the person’s past knowledge or things to various to mention. Like so many things in life, it will always be subject to the eye and/or mind of the beholder.
Anyway, we’re getting off track here. People rejecting image software such as Photoshop usually refer themselves to purists whereas I believe I’m a purist without feeling the need to reject postproduction in my work. And why is that? Basically I assume both purest like me and anti-Photoshop purists crave the same outcome: A photograph that looks realistic. Key word here being look. Just as I don’t believe random snap shots embodies this trait just as I don’t necessarily believe unpostprocessed images does either.
This is why I’ve come to see myself as: A different kind of purist.
What the world looks like to my cameras sensor is completely irrelevant to my actual perception of reality, and I feel that the snap shots as well as extremely well composed unedited photographs alike depend on me to alter my perception of reality, whereas the picture I consider purist doesn’t necessarily need to look natural or realistic at all to be conceived as realistic or natural in my mind. Although as a general rule, the two usual coincides more often than not, by far.
When watch something, or even just rest my eyes without thought, my brain will automatically sort through my information, steering my focus to something, or catching more details here rather than there. This is what’s natural and should in my opinion pervade into photography.
Exemplifying what ordinary naturalistic/realistic photos looks like seems rather pointless so I won’t, I will however give a few examples of pictures which are rather highly edited to actually live up to the perceived image in my mind.
I’ll exemplify this using pictures’ from Auschwitz and Auschwitz II. They make good examples because the experience was out of the ordinary. Having seen so many photographs from these two locations before, visiting gave a very apparent sense of déjà vu, and knowing the history of the place colored the experience profusely.
#1:
(Image exported without any editing (by me!) from raw to jpeg using a preset in Aperture)
(Post processed and cropped in Lightroom)
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t consider the post processed image rather natural at all. For one, the colors are much too saturated for my taste having upped the hue of yellow and he saturation of both aqua and blue. Grass just about never looks that green and the sky is seldom that blue. Except when I was there, this is exactly how I perceived it. The colors very so incredibly vivid maybe because you usually see the site photographed in foggy gray weather or in B&W. Being there made the actual colors so real, especially this bright spring day.
The unedited photograph however is too warm at 5474 K compared to the edited at 5300 K, it’s composition also draws attention to the building on the far left, which I in reality never paid attention to (had I, I wouldn’t have unintentionally included it in picture!). The color is also very of, I’d say just as off from reality as the edited picture. The vignette on the unedited picture also looks more unrealistic in the unedited one compared to the edited, (neither has a postproduction added vignette though).
In the edited photograph the color red is just about eliminated, making the brick colored more brick colors as opposed to weird fluorescent. Clearly in this case my sensor did not see the color like human eyes at all.
#2:
This example is even less obvious, perhaps, but the second image still shows what I saw much better than the first. I actually starred at the rose so intensively that the details and colors around it faded. When I look at it now I don’t notice the heavily desiderated background, the cropping of the fence keeps my eyes from wandering of the rose.
To the unedited picture, I want to add that I don’t think anyone has seen that color on grass before, but it’s straight out of the camera. Realistic, isn’t it?
I’d say these images at least slightly point to the existence of an “unrealistic realism”. Or perception purism, if you will. What these will look like will of course depend greatly on so much more than just you sight, but on all senses, and most likely an experience outside the frames of the photograph.
Just like the mind is arbitrary so is my sense for these photographs. Here is an example of a photo I took, which I don’t find realistic at all:
I can only speculate as to why, but I think it’s because it was taken to capture something purely visual as opposed to something that I put more senses into.
If you made it this far, go you! Feel free to share your views of this matter in the comments.
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