Introduction
I wrote several articles in recent years on fine art photography and fine art architectural photography, specifically. There is a lot of misunderstanding and even ignorance about what fine art architectural photography is. This article summarizes, punctuates, and finally expands on what I wrote before with the hope that it will clarify.
Whether one aims to create fine art photography in landscape, portraiture, still life, or architecture, it is necessary to explain first what fine art photography is without the adjective ‘architectural’, since the misunderstanding is greatest here.
The importance of understanding what fine art is is not acknowledged sufficiently. This clarification will be followed by a brief analysis of what architectural photography is. Finally, I will combine the definitions and analysis into a conclusion.
What Fine Art Is Not
To start with, what fine art photography is not. Here’s where part of the misconception is that has led to a devaluation by the public at large of what fine art is.
Art or fine art is not something that even AI can create. Just a visual ‘trick’ that AI can also perform in seconds. Fine art photography is not merely a visual style; it includes a visual style and goes far beyond it. A visual style is just the package, the presentation that serves to enhance or support the content or message. It is the content, the message, and its intention that make it fine art. Not the presentation. It should be needless to state that a nice black and white ‘wrapping’ only doesn’t make it fine art.
What Makes Fine Art – A Summary
What makes something fine art? The content and the intention given to it make it fine art and should therefore be decisive. I have explained it here and here to mention some of the articles I wrote, but I will summarize it here.
Starting from my personal premise that ‘Art is consciousness manifested’, it follows from here that every expression of one’s unique subjective experience can qualify as art. Therefore, it is important to note that there is no such thing as a definitive definition of what art is, as no subjective experience is the same. Any definition by any artist that is authentic and can be defended by the artist will suffice.
It is my strong conviction that every artist needs to define for themselves what art is to them and stand behind it. There is no need to articulate that definition in words, but it certainly is beneficial. What is critical is the authenticity and integrity with which the artist creates and operates, as that will be decisive for the viewer to reject or accept the creation as fine art.
I would even go so far as to state that if you cannot define for yourself, and just for YOURSELF, what art is other than just describing a visual style, and you persist in communicating you are creating fine art, you are only contributing to a widespread misconception of how art is perceived and ultimately to a devaluation or even dismissal of art’s important value.
And even worse, you are not giving expression and meaning to yourself by using someone else’s idea of art.
Extrapolating on this, when we learn, we effectively do this via emulation. When we progress in our learning, we increasingly try to remove elements we used to emulate to replace them with authentic and endogenous parts. We have then come to the phase where we can use what we have learned as a basis from which we can improvise. And it is in-between the phases that we stop emulating to learn and start replacing what we have learned with endogenous elements, that we must find a way to articulate for oneself what it is we actually want to say. When we know what to say, we know what art is for ourselves.
What I Believe Fine Art Is
To me, fine art is the authentic expression of an intrinsic and subjective experience that demands to be channelled through external manifestation: an unavoidable act of creation that exists in and of itself.
Since the subjective experience is always abstract for any observer, but very concrete and felt for the subject who experiences it, a proven way to manifest the abstract experience concretely is via a symbolic use of objects (compare Stieglitz’s Equivalents).
How to translate a subjective experience into an object is something I have tried to describe in previous articles and especially in my architectural workshops. I won’t go into that in this article.
Architectural Photography Without Fine Art
When we talk about architectural photography without the label fine art, the image needs to comply with the following:
- The main object matter is an architectural object.
- The main subject matter is about celebrating the architectural design.
Requirements that require no explanation in the context of this summary.
What are the necessary elements of an architectural photograph? Only referring to technical elements
- (Spatial) composition. Architectural photography includes specific compositional techniques that deviate from the universal compositional rules, such as the rule of thirds or the golden ratio. Universal compositional rules are exactly that: universal and not specifically targeted at architectural photography. They are only secondary and complementary in architectural photography. Axial and non-axial composition, and one-facade or two-facade compositions, for example, are more important in architectural photography. This is one of the most important topics in my on-location workshops.
- All verticals need to be straight.
- Only ignore (2) if a unique detail or element of the architectural object, characteristic of that architectural object, can only be depicted and given importance if the camera is tilted. The dramatic effect of converging vertical lines when tilting the camera is not unique to a specific building. It is a universal characteristic of every building, and adds nothing to the design of that building. In other words, if there’s nothing more to show than the universality of converging lines, then keep those verticals straight. Period.
- A good architectural photograph needs to celebrate the architectural design. This often requires research into the architect’s intentions. There are several ways of researching, and the use case document on architect Zaha Hadid that I recently shared with newsletter subscribers is one example of such research. There are other ways of doing research, for example, through ‘literary photography’ and ‘scholarly photography’, which I shared with participants in my on-location workshops. You can also trust your own knowledge of architecture in general or your ‘gut feeling’, but unless you’re an architect or architectural scholar, you are not well-informed.
- Proportions and relative dimensions are important. This is related to (4), where the architectural design is celebrated. Disproportional shapes and dimensions distort and dismiss the architectural design.
Architectural Photography With Fine Art
Fine Art architectural photography, on one hand, respects the architectural object as designed and intended by the architect, and on the other hand, it also expresses the subjective experience of the art photographer. The artist then uses the architectural object as a symbol to support the expression of the subjective experience.
A fine art architectural photograph needs to have elements of both, not just one. If the art photographer only expresses the subjective experience without celebrating the architectural design, then it is still a fine art photograph, but not a fine art architectural photograph. This distinction is important. Even more important is understanding the distinction when you qualify and present yourself as a fine art or fine art architectural photographer, or fine art landscape photographer, for that matter.
I don’t think that distinction is clear in the community of fine art architectural photographers, who, unfortunately, largely believe that fine art architectural photography only refers to a visual style and don’t do justice to the architectural object. Again, I find that troubling as it devalues fine art architectural photography.
The Role of Post-processing In Fine Art
Fine art processing, whether it is for fine art in B&W or in color, only supports the expression of the subjective experience. It can amplify or clarify the fine art photograph, but it cannot exclusively define it.
It is just one part of what fine art photography is, or fine art architectural/landscape/portraiture photography. Just claiming that a photo is fine art because of the visual style it has been processed in, is not doing justice to other, more fundamental elements of fine art. Art is the authentic expression of a subjective experience that is independent of a visual style.
In Conclusion
No matter what I described in this article, what ‘good’ architectural photography is, what fine art photography is, and what is expected from artists working in those disciplines, I stand firmly behind what I said earlier in this article.
In art, no one should tell you what art is for you. They can only tell you what art means to them. No one should tell you whether your work is good or not.
Having said that, always keep in mind that a good educator is important. And keep in mind that there’s a time to learn first before you can take your stand. The latter is also referred to as ‘finding your own voice’.
Finding your own voice implies that you know what art is for yourself, before you can give expression to it in that unique way that does justice to you as a thinking and feeling human.
How do we know when something does justice to yourself as an individual? In other words, how can we find our own voice? I wrote a practical reading about that for my on-location workshop students, based on Carl Jung’s concept of Individuation. The Individuation concept may seem daunting and abstract, like many of Carl Jung’s ideas, but I believe I made it concrete and practical to put into practice.
At some point, you take good teaching as a basis out of which you start exploring, improvising, and experimenting. I recently read this article by Guy Tal on the difference between ‘classical’ and ‘jazz’ photographers. It is a great and insightful article. In that spirit: be a jazz photographer, improvise on a solid basis, find your own voice, and be yourself. Or you can be the virtuoso performer of an Ansel Adams photograph and discard yourself.
Learning More
If you are eager and passionate to learn more about not only the How, which I teach often in webinars, but also the What and even more insightful Why, for which there’s only time and opportunity in workshops, then I invite you to attend one of my on-location workshops.
I won’t tell you what you should think of art, but I encourage you to think about it and give you starting points. I won’t tell you that there’s only one good way to photograph architecture, but I will encourage you to take what I teach as a basis and then start improvising on it.
There’s a reason that I always call the group of students in my workshops a ‘jazz band’: we collaborate, and we inspire each other to improve and improvise. Don’t be the second Ansel Adams, don’t be the second Joel Tjintjelaar or whoever you admire, be the first <fill out your own name>.
Finally, it needs to be clear that all my articles, and blogposts cannot be distributed or partly copied and then integrated in an article or post to conceal that it has been copied, without my prior consent. If you like what I wrote, and want to use my articles or parts of it, then just be fair and credit the original author.
2 Responses
Excellent piece Joel! There is lot in it that I will employ in my own work, defining what my work means to me is such a great concept. Thank you so much!
Many thanks Bob! Happy to hear it inspires you to use some of the things in your own work.
Best,
Joel