PULLING BACK FROM THE REAL

By MICHAEL PERKINS

ONE OF THE GREATEST LEGACIES of the first two hundred years of photography has been the ability of images to be either anchored to, or completely thrown clear of, the literal world. Pictures may have been originally made to document, or prove, or demonstrate elements of reality, to preserve time in ways previously impossible. However, they soon revealed the photographer’s urge to interpret, not merely set things down on salted paper. This was the creative instinct, the demand of the individual to see life in distinctive and unique ways, commenting, rather than merely cataloging.

There has never been a better time to be a photographer. Never.

Phantom Squadron, 2024

This is not because of any one technical development or scientific breakthrough. It’s because the accumulated power of the billions of images made every day has removed the last few barriers to photography as an art. Given the flood tide of choices we enjoy at present, we can’t even agree on what constitutes a “camera” anymore. Devices don’t matter except that they sometime free us in other ways, like allowing us to shoot anything, anywhere, and make it look like whatever we want. Even without the influence of A.I., which like any development, will either be a miracle or a curse, depending on the user, we are already virtually unhindered in being able to technically render any kind of image we can imagine. Our eyes must be master of our tools, to be sure, but there is no longer any limit on what those tools can be.

All of which begs the question, why does it matter whether we reveal how we created a given shot? One, the only thing that really matters is the result, and nothing about a strong picture can be made any stronger by explaining that it was made by using X and Y to accomplish Z (so throw away the captions on 99% of the pictures hanging on museum walls). Two, even if we share the absolute step-by-step “recipes” on how a given shot was made, the execution of that recipe will still vary from artist to artist. We simply can’t create a uniform version of either reality or unreality. Which is to say, as we always do in these pages, feel more than you think. Convey rather than record. Always be shooting, and always ask yourself about how much of you makes it into the final picture. What else is there?