A photograph has lived under the shadow of painting for more than a century. It’s value is judged, almost unanimously, by its comparison to the established art criticism of painting. Therefore, we speak of composition, mood, shades and hues and many times painting-like effect achieved in a picture. Not that anything is wrong with these attributes but I feel there is much more to a photograph than just these attributes. This would require going into the process of making or taking a picture in comparison to painting. Let’s take painting first. A painting is a process – and a rather long one at that and during that process the painter starts with a pre-visualization – refines it on the canvas by including some elements and excluding some. A deep thought process goes into the canvas stretched over days weeks or even months. It is a conscious effort allowing correctives at the sole will of the artist, the master of the universe that he or she creates on the canvas. The final painting may not indicate any of the processes which went into its making. The prolonged process fixes a painting for the artist fills gaps, resolves the unresolved, closes loose ends in order to present a coherent visual dialogue. The longer the process the more fixed it gets. All abstractions that there might have been in the mind of the artist find resolution through time spent on canvas and their mutation into meaning, however dense, is only inevitable. And because meaning is so deeply and comprehensively imbibed in the canvas, a painting is less open to interpretative modes. The very length of the process has assured that. A painting would invariable belong to a style, genre and of course a person.
Compare this now to a picture. Leaving aside some assignments where there is time for a photographer to pre-visualize, most of the photography work comes as a surprise to the photographer. There is a strong element of serendipity involved in this pursuit. A shutter release stamps the instant state of the photographer. And because the instant is not evolved at all, it is terribly alone, cut off from the continuum of life which we inhabit. This slice of time has no meaning. It is an absurdity to be more extreme for nothing in real world exists bearing resemblance to it. The absolute un-meaning is the value of a picture. The pictorial is a façade. The picture lies elsewhere, in contrast to a painting which lies ‘there’.
In the process of capturing moments the photographer becomes a strange attractor of moments. Each one of us must have had several occasions when in the process of making a picture the moment has travelled into the frame inadvertently, unannounced and silent. The visual alertness of the photographer instantly translates that moment into an element of composition thus transforming activity into an event. In a way this “instanted’ reality exceeds the real, becoming hyper-real, surreal – to which the viewer gravitates without pretention because the picture too has none. The picture does not challenge, it invites. It is a welcome sign in the world of exodus and exile.; a metaphor in the world of meanings.
A photograph has no edges. The excluded always follows it as an estranged absence. The process of framing a picture only closes its aesthetics boundary but visual borders are open for interpretation and travel. (It will be interesting to see photograph framed in a manner not declaring its aesthetic boundaries).
A moment is so strong a part of the picture that thinking of the pictorial without consideration of its momentousness is an anomaly (in fact momentousness itself exists as an anamoly). Of course there would be pictures which were meant to be pictorial representations alone such as scientific macro shots, close up studies of flora and fauna but majority of the pictures are pure visuals with elements suspended in a super dimensional time warp re-inaugurating the reality upon each blink of the eye. Like Sriharsha’s pixels of life series - especially where he has caught a bird in flight back dropped by a landscape; the bird representing a consciousness-lapse of the photographer, making him to click without interjection of thought or visual preparedness. This is seeing in its purest sense in which there is absolute severance of “I “ from the “eye”. Come to think of it, photography begins at “I” piece and ends at “eye” piece. Between this journey lies a process of unlearning and unleashing from the I, the process of seeing. Coming back to the Sri Harsha’s picture – it might have violated some hallowed canons of photography’s aesthetics but in spite of that it releases a song. It is so deeply nostalgic, at once placid and seething with activity, terribly lonesome, resounding with emptiness, a critique and explication of romance, journey, the ephemeral and the permanent. All this in just one un-guarded moment! Which is difficult to come by.
Colour, composition, value, mood accompany every picture which is taken. What sets apart one picture from the other is “that” moment in its relationship to everything around it. Beyond the pictorial the critique of a picture lies in exploring these relationships and linkages. The very act and speed of taking a picture ‘captures’ a moment in midflight, different strands of that activity are not allowed to mature into a sensible happening by the act of shutter release . These strands float about in the space of the frame defying our sensibilities as audacious anomalies amidst our structured stream of thought. Because the event is left in a state of incompleteness, the viewer’s scope of exercising discretion to interpret this still increases manifolds. Each one can just take one of the strands and extend that to his or her utopian universe where that event unfolds to the will of the viewer. A picture thus makes a viewer a moment-king.
A painter has lived with his work for a ling long time before it is set free to public gaze. The photographer does not have this opportunity. So the living with the picture has to begin with viewer, especially those who have the responsibility of critiquing it. The best way to critique an image is to take it home. Think of all the visual and non-visual emotions it evokes and thus reflect them onto the frame of your being looking for social, personal, metaphysical, mythical, historical, pictorial, political analogues. After you have truly felt you felt you felt- language is the easiest part – just let words roll. Don’t hesitate in saying ‘awesome’ in more number of words. Because it’s the words that complete the picture. The photographer just left it there as a subtle cue.
Nirlep Singh