Scruton and the Art of Photography

Scruton convincingly shows that the art of photography is best served when judged by different standards than those applied to the art of painting and his definition of the ideal photograph. He stated, “it is not necessary to define the subject of a photograph in terms of this causal process…the subject is so defined for my logical ideal of photography: that premise is all my argument requires” (p 222.). He claims that the intentional act involved in the ideal photograph is not an essential part of the photographic relation. According to Scruton, the ideal photograph yields an appearance, but it is only interesting as a record of how an actual object looked, not as the realization of an intention (p. 214.). While this might be true of some types of photography some of the time, I do not believe it to be true for all types of photography, and certainly not all of the time.

I can compare photographers of nature, people, and landscapes, to artists, who painted scenes of village, country, aristocratic, military, or monastic life, utilizing existing landscapes, buildings, and accoutrements to capture the essence of the times and their intent.

Scruton’s argument that a photograph lacks “intentional existence” and is incapable of representing anything unreal excises the imagination and vision of the photographer and the observer from the artistic process. We might “see” dragons, unicorns, gnomes, or trolls in patterns of cloud formations, tree bark, boulders, sand, or landscapes, and choose to photograph, and even share these visions with others. Our sense of what the photographer intended might determine our experience of what is there, in the same manner a painter’s intentions might determine our experience of the subject of the painting (p 215).

I do not believe that a painting is necessarily a complete expression of the thought it contains. If that were true, then we would not need art reviews, art critics, or art experts, and we would not have discussions about incomprehensible art.

Portraiture photographs of people, and other sentient non-human animals, which capture the subject’s eyes looking directly at the photographer, can be compelling and revealing in a time-less mode. The ability of a photograph to capture the essence of a person is the reason many aboriginal people believed that photographs stole the soul of the person photographed. Scruton did not address the powerful stories told by this style of photography.

Our reading thus far this semester has illustrated the fact that knowledge does inform our aesthetic appreciation of art. When observing a photograph of children interacting, knowledge of children adds to our depth of understanding of the relational experience of the children, and possibly even insight into the nature of the soul of the children; who they were then, and what nature of adults they will most like become. Knowledge of the subject, whether that subject is animate or inanimate informs our relationship with its representation, whether painted or photographed. While viewing a photograph of the Grand Canyon, we can appreciate the processes of erosion that sculpted it, the edaphic qualities that provide its coloration, and the enormity of its scale. Knowledge of the subject can complete the expression of the thought within an image, and provide it with that sense of permanence Scruton believes is a requirement of true representational thought. These are some of the reasons I believe Scruton failed to convincingly show photography to be lesser art form than painting.

My Questions:

1. Does digitally optimizing a picture (according to the sense of the individual photographer) alter its basic nature - making it more or less of an artistic object?

2. Can photographs "capture the soul" of the sentient-being photographed?