The Photograph and The Painting

New York’s Museum of Modern Art once devoted an entire exhibition demonstrating how the compositional traditions of painters were passed on to photographers. Early photographers  made images on the basis of paintings they had seen. It was the their vocabulary.  Eventually painting and photography would share an innovative mutually influenced relationship.  Today the border has almost dissolved between the photography and painting.  In 1861, only  a decade after the death of J.M.W.Turner  and  22 years after the invention of photography, the French photographer E. Colliau took this shot of a French country village ( example 1). His composition shows the influence of landscape painters like Turner.  The idea of a frame within a frame, a scene within a scene, a window within a window.  The painting itself being the first window; the framed alley being the second  (example 2, Turner’s  early career oil painting).  While Turner’s painting has more narrative complexity,  more atmosphere,   and better design unity through the use of reflection,  and more subtle constructions taking you infinitely back into a the life of the city the comparison is still clear as you see in Colliau’s mimicry of Turner’s  motif.

example 1.

example 2.

Turner’s prediction that  photography would become ubiquitous  with future artists has proved to be true.  What he could not have anticipated is the enormity of technological advances in the uses of photography in relationship to painting.  Today an artist, like me or you, can take an image and manipulate it to appear painterly in Photoshop. Or better yet,  we can marry the two mediums  directly.  In the following examples observe  how  the photo image is manipulated  through the application of  oil painting  to its surface.  I am able to do this because 3M makes a transparency film which is receptive to paint and,  may be run through a Canon Pixma ( or other brand) inkjet printer. Here are two examples . First,  you see the original photo which is followed by the same image only overpainted with oils. Note that  some elements of the original image are preserved  but, the image itself has mutated significantly. The first example is a photo I presented in an earlier blog which  then receives  the oil paint manipulation.

example 3.

example 4.

The next examples are  a photo of a stream followed by the same image after over-painting with oils. Note the direction, speed and identity of the image is profoundly altered but, it is still possible to trace the influence of the original photo.

example 5.

example 6.

Finally, I wish to extend  my personal invitation to you to come to my next lecture at the Silvermine Art Center in New Canaan, Ct.  on Sunday May 6, 2012 at 5 PM.  The subject:  “How To Stimulate Your Creativity and, How To Sell It”  is based on recent research in the fields of  psychology, economics, art history, and neuro-science.