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

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

The Astro-Photography Mailing List
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>>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?
>
>He had a very good eye for selecting moments in time where things lined up
>in dynamic ways. His compositions, juxtapositions, sense of form, and
>content make his images powerful. He was able to make the kind of aesthetic
>decisions I've been trying to talk about, when shooting the world around
>him. He was certainly as much an artist as Ansel Adams.


There is, tonight, in the constellation Lyra, a dynamic event in the process
of ocurring. In the cosmic scale of time, a moment ago it wasn't there, a
moment from now it won't be there. But at this moment when we exist the ring
of M57 is briefly bright and visible, and thus worth photographing.

Before you dismiss that as too slow to count as "dynamic," consider the very
real effect is has on our choice of subject: An 8" telescope will probably
allow you to photograph millions of stars which have or will blow off rings
like M57. But those others aren't photographed every night; we choose to
focus only on those in which are in the peak of the event when the rings are
at their brightest.

Cartier-Bresson observed events and photographed them at the peak moment; we
observe myriad samples of such events and select only those near their peak.
Because of the huge differences in time scale the techniques are different,
but the effect is not.

Much of what "art" astrophotographers photograph are precisely those dynamic
events. Thus we find the Pleiades a more interesting photo subject than the
Beehive cluster because the Pleiades are still swaddled in the clouds of
their birth, full of swirl and turbulence, whereas the Beehive does not
visibly exhibit such dynamism.

Likewise most of the other popular deep-sky subjects: They are largely the
objects and places where dynamic events are ocurring -- star birth, star
death, clouds forming and dissipating, and the huge dynamic conglomerations
that are globular clusters and galaxies. M81, M101, M33 and other open
spirals are particularly interesting subjects because their obvious spin
gives the image a dynamic quality; their evident motion makes them pop out
of the "canvas." But even then we value most the brief dramatic events: We
consider M51 particularly interesting precisely because we have caught it in
a moment of collision with another galaxy. We find the Veil Nebula visually
compelling because its twisted threads evoke the image of an
incomprehensively violent explosion.

Cartier-Bresson did not photograph crowds or street scenes in general, but
instead focused on interesting events in crowds and on streets. His
selection of those events is what made his work art, as opposed to the
purely documentary images of say, a traffic camera. And in the same way most
of us do not photograph the sky in general, but those specific peak moments
when the dynamism of the universe is most evident.

There are, of course, types of astrophotography that are not art in any way
because no real creative control is exercised. For instance, a friend and I
are in the long, slow process of shooting a color sky atlas. It is the
astrophoto equivalent of a traffic camera: Point at a section of sky, align
precisely north-south, shoot for exact same duration on the exact same film
with the exact same lenses every time. If the image chops a beautiful nebula
or star field in half, so be it. That kind of photography I consider
photographic documentation, not photographic art.

But when I shoot a photo of the North American nebula region and select a
focal length that will include both the North American and Pelican nebulae,
with enough room around both to allow the composition to be balanced, framed
and aligned with the bright mass of NGC7000 off-center to the left so the
more delicate IC5067 and IC5068 are highlighted in the center and right and
aligned so there is a radial symmetry to the three primary components,
exposing long enough that the faint wisps of IC5068 will serve as the third
radial element on the right -- in that image I am not trying to document,
but to portray a very personal view of a starscape as I see it. Whether the
result is art is for others to decide, but it was certainly my intent to
portray my personal view of the scene, not to record dispassionately.
(http://www.airdigital.com/deepsky_photos_2.html at top of the page, if
anyone is interested.)

But again, we are back to discussing our personal definitions of art, and
yours differs from mine, and both of us differ from everyone else. My only
broad appeal in that regard is that I think most would agree that any
photograph of a scene which captures the photographer's personal view of
that scene is expressive by definition, and therefore it is art. Depending
on the quality of execution it may be *bad* art, but art is certainly its
driving intent.

Wil M.