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

[Gordon Couger <gcouger@rfdata.net>]

The Astro-Photography Mailing List
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I agree that print manipulation is about the only art to astrophotography
but it can still be a substantial art. I have done very little sstro
photography
but with the tools we have now there is a lot of room for art. Technique
must be very good to start with. Much better than other froms of
photography.

I think that the death of a partizan was taken by Bob Capa in the Spanish
Civil war. There is some small question that it is posed.

Gordon

Gordon Couger gcouger@couger.com
Stillwater, OK        405 624-2855   GMT -6:00
>
>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.
>
>