The Limitations Of Photography

[poliphilo]

"The trouble with photography," says David Hockney. "Is it's so flat". I've been thinking that over for the past few days- and it really came home to me yesterday when we were at Hampton Court and I was taking pictures in the gardens. After a while I gave up. What I was trying to capture was the scale of the place- of the distance from A to B and the immense volume and depth of the empty air above and around- and it soon became clear that I was getting none of it. With photography you're arranging flat shapes on a flat surface. It's very like doing collage

I mean, look at this. Standing in that space was thrilling, but the picture is just dull, dull, dull...

Comments

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

I know it doesn't begin to capture the reality, but it still gives a hint of the scale and splendour of the place to those of us who have never been there...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I'm passionate about photography- but there are some things it just can't do.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

It's true- the way a camera sees is not the way we see.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We see in fragments, from different angles and with an ever changing focus- and our brain somehow stitches all this disparate information together into an over-all picture. The first artists to "get" this were Picasso and Braque