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

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

The Astro-Photography Mailing List
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>Are you talking about the famous Robert Capa photograph??

Yes, of course you're right. Six feet from me as I wrote is a book
containing the photo, which also contains many of HCB's photos, so they ran
together in my mind and I didn't bother to check. A good example of how the
mind and memory are often not objective either (or at least mine often
aren't).

>You did bring up an interesting point. Henri Cartier-Bresson stated a
>long time ago that manufactured or staged photography was of no interest
>to him. He considered his camera a drawing tablet and wanted to give
>definition to the world. He is now in hundreds of art galleries. He is
>also a painter. So, what makes him an artist? Would he not be more a
>documentarian?

The question is not whether he was a "documentarian," but whether
documenting an event, a scene, or an object can also be art. All forms of
human documentation -- writing, photography, audio, video, etc. -- involve a
degree of subjectivity, sometimes a great deal of subjectivity and thereby a
high degree of creative control that can be exercised.

Since you work in the video world, consider a simple video camera: Bolted to
a bracket in a bank lobby it becomes pure documentation, blindly recording
what is in front of it without intelligence or reaction. But when you take
that camera into your hands and start walking around the bank with it, you
inherently exercise control of subject, duration, framing, etc. We are no
longer seeing a pure recording of the bank lobby, but your view of the bank.

If a robbery happens in the bank the camera on the bracket will record it in
a purely objective manner, without reaction. But if a robbery happens while
you are holding the camera I'll bet we'll see your very personal reaction to
the robbery and what you think is important for us to see. If you are in the
process of interviewing a loan officer on tape when the robbery begins I
guarantee you'll stop the interview and try to tape the robbery instead, and
we will see that robbery from your personal point of view. At that point are
you a purely objective "documentarian," or are you giving us your personal
view of the event?


Wil M.