Re: [APML]: Astrophotography or Astro-Art?

["Wil Milan" <wmilan@airdigital.com>]

The Astro-Photography Mailing List
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>I was not talking in absolutes. It is not a digital yes or no issue. My
>point was that there are more choices to make, hence more ability to use
>those decisions for expressive purposes.
>
<snip>
>
>Because of the distances involved, astrophotography is usually dealing with
>the equivalent of a flat scene from a fixed location. In terrestrial
>photography we are dealing with a three dimensional world. The location of
>the camera can have significant effect on the alignment of objects in the
>frame. So, again there is more to work with for expressive purposes.
>The astrophotographer has fewer compositional choices to make.
>
>Photography as art was a controversial topic because many considered it to
>be a recording medium with insufficient expressive control. Over time a
>number of talented photographers showed that it could be used as an
>expressive medium. My personal feeling is that astrophotography has fewer
>expressive options than terrestrial photography. So, it is more difficult
>to make astrophotos that make a statement. Yes, they can be beautiful, but
>so can the recording of a view through a microscope that is done without
>any aesthetic intent. To me, Art requires the an expressive component.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that the expression has to come from the
artist manipulating the subject.

Take, for example, the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson: Many of his photos are
"found images." images that just happened to pop up in front of him. His
famous "death of a partisan" image happened to catch a soldier in the act of
being shot in battle -- a mesmerizingly powerful image to be sure, but not
one that he planned or carefully constructed. He just happened to snap the
shutter as the bullet struck the soldier. And as you know, Cartier-Bresson
never did any post-processing of his images; he figured his work was done
when he snapped the shutter on a simple rangefinder camera, and sent the
film off to be developed. So was that photo of of the soldier a work of art,
or not?

One could argue, I suppose, that Cartier-Bresson's images were
photojournalism, not art. But to me that is a distinction without a
difference, or at least with no bright line of division. No one will dispute
that Cartier-Bresson produced many of the most powerful images of our
century, and his work is featured in books, museums, and galleries around
the world. Given that, can one truly claim that such work is not art because
he did not carefully arrange the soldier in front of the bullet?

To me, astrophotography is in many ways akin to Cartier-Bresson's "found
images." God and nature have provided us with the subjects and scenes, and
in most cases fixed our distance perspective. Beyond that, we have all the
control anyone has of any image: exposure, color rendition, image tone,
visual texture, composition, etc. Once one gets past the basics of capturing
the image one wants, the art is in the creative choice of subject,
arrangement, rendition, etc. -- just like any other type of photography. It
does indeed require mastery of significant technical skill, but so does oil
painting, marble sculpture, and many other types of art, and in that sense
astrophotography (as most of us practice it, at least) no more related to
"science" than steel sculpture is akin to welding I-beams in buildings. Both
use the same tools, but the purposes and results are quite different.

Having said all that, perhaps all we're proving here is what I stated at the
outset: That the term "art" has become so diluted in our time that it has
lost all practical meaning, and therefore no objective statements can be
made about what is or is not art. So I hereby apologize for my part in
wasting everyone's time over this, and I suggest we stop the navel-gazing
and get back to taking astrophotos, whether or not they be "art." :-)

Wil M.