Richard Renaldi - The Nicolaysen Art Museum

Each medium of art is intrinsically tied to its nature and it
is the nature of photography to depict—in glorious detail,
what we can and cannot see, right in front of our eyes.
The notion of photography as an unbiased recorder of
fact and reality has been methodically stripped away, but
there is still the rote reality of its mechanical process that
interacts with the motives of artist, subject, and viewer.
Since its inception in the early 19th century, photography
has strived to be taken seriously as a fine art form. The
fact that it was not of the hand and was considered a very
democratic medium made acceptance a long, hard battle.
Painting, with its sensual surface, cult of the genius artist
with the oversized ego and personality went hand in
hand with established painterly pictoral conventions that
influencedandhamstrungphotography from the beginning.
Chiefamongthiswasthetableau, “thatindependentlybeautiful
depiction and composition that derives from the
institutionalization of perspective and dramatic figuration...
it is known as a product of divine gift, high skill, deep
emotion, and crafty planning.” 2 In its infancy, photography
could only present its surface as what it was. It had no
gooey, thick substance to play around with, so a reliance
on painterly conventions to compose the picture only
went so far. Photography, though could play its own tricks
with the surface, utilizing the “close-up, blow-up, depth of
field, precision of detail [to open up] spaces that previously
existed in dreams...buthadcertainlyneverbeenconsciouslyseen,
let alone reproduced.” 3 It could take reality, such as it was,
and make it more so.
2 Jeff Wall, “Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art,” in Veronica’s
Revenge: Contemporary Perspectives on Photography, ed. Elizabeth Janus (New York: Scalo, 1998), 75.
3 Holger Liebs, ”The Same Returns: The Tradition of Documentary Photography,” in Veronica’s
Revenge: Contemporary Perspectives on Photography, ed. Elizabeth Janus, (New York, Scalo, 1998), 102.
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