Photography

There is something wonderful about photography.

There’s something about photography that makes it more something from something than the music, painting, sculpture... While obviously not literal creation from nothing, in all these arts, there’s an obvious element of deliberately forming a blank slate. A photograph, in contrast, is not a creation from nothing but a recording of something else. That is, perhaps, why so many people don’t know quite how to react to photography as an art, especially so-called “straight” photography — photography that is, in some sense, of the world as it is, rather than of a world deliberately constructed for the photograph. When the photograph is heavily manipulated, or depicts something constructed specifically for the photograph, we can immediately recognize a sort of creation from nothing. In straight photography, there’s no part of the creative process that is quite like sculpting or writing.

Given all this, I can’t exactly explain where the sense of satisfaction from creating a straight photograph comes from. I think many professional photographers feel the same, judging by interviews I’ve read, in which a jumble of different suggestions and theories are put forth, but none of them seem to capture exactly where that sense of satisfaction comes from. It exists, but in a sense it’s different from the satisfaction that comes from a "from nothing" creation like a drawing.