An Examination of Aesthetics in Photography: What Makes the Photograph So Elusive?
Background
The concept of how aesthetics relate to photographs first caught my attention when I was stopped by security guards while photographing inside a loading bay at a shopping centre. It was winter, so by around 5 pm it had already gotten dark. Several metallic crates were stacked up, softly lit by a blue fluorescent safety light which was positioned on an adjacent wall. The overhead lights had been switched off, meaning that the multiple safety lights on the right-hand wall were the only source of light. Consequently, the shadows on the metallic crates were harsh yet gradual, with the intensity of blue light falling on the crates decreasing gently as it inched toward the non-lit side of the crates.
I began photographing the crates. Taking wide shots as well as close-up shots to capture the gradation of the light. My enjoyment of the safety lights was stopped abruptly when two security guards approached me explaining they had seen me on the CCTV and wanted to know what I was doing. I explained that I liked the look of the area and I wanted to take pictures. One man said he did not see why anyone would want to take pictures because they liked the appearance of a loading bay, so he proceeded to call a manager. I tried to show them photographs I had taken in similar industrial spaces, to no avail. They did not assign the same aesthetic to the space or to the images that I had.
Figure 1.
Figure 1 depicts the diptych that I showed to the security guards in which the seemingly mundane provided aesthetic value. The interplay of colours and diagonal and vertical lines in the two scenes were quite pleasing. The photographs are in conversation with one another, each communicating a certain feeling. I was intrigued by the fact that the security guards found no aesthetic merit in the images I showed them whereas, for me the aesthetic value was of axiom, almost intrinsic. Aesthetic value though, is not intrinsic, so the question of how we assign aesthetic value to photographs arises.
This exploration in part, looks at the mundane, asking what it is that allows some people to appreciate everyday photography whereas to others a box is a box. Why is it that a photograph of a giant ocean wave crashing on a shore is more aesthetically valuable than the photograph of a box well-lit from the side? The answer may seem intuitive, but I would like to go further asking exactly what tools we employ when making a judgement about the aesthetic value of a photograph. The essay intends to explore the issue rather than giving
Introduction
Aesthetics, in its formal sense is the study of beauty and taste. Some photographers in the 1800s (particularly those of the pictorialist movement), sought to elevate photography to the status of painting and sculpture. Pictorialists put beauty and tonality above accurately portraying reality. At the time, galleries rarely accepted photographs that were purely illustrative in nature. Therefore, it was commonplace for photographers to adhere to many of the aesthetic conventions in paintings at the time. So called ‘mundane’ or everyday photography would likely not have been accepted.
The article aims to examine aesthetics in photography and ask what it is that makes a photograph ‘aesthetic’. An important caveat to be added is ‘aesthetic to who’? Who is in mind when the question of a photograph’s aesthetic quality is raised? As previously stated, a photograph cannot be intrinsically aesthetic or else there would be no variation in taste. It therefore follows that when value is assigned to a photograph in terms of its aesthetic quality, the viewer is doing so with some kind of reference to certain presuppositions. These presuppositions are largely informed by past experience.
For layman, looking at photography from the outside it may be difficult to comprehend some of the more nuanced works. Typically, laypeople are drawn to photographic clichés such as sunsets. Whereas, the practitioner may be visually inclined toward still-life images of everyday objects. The essay argues that the layman is unlikely to be drawn to the aesthetic quality of an image outside of three scenarios.
In the first, the photograph is picturesque and adheres to the compositional and tonal elements in many paintings. Perhaps the use of symmetry or leading lines is very striking and therefore aesthetic merit is awarded. The viewer is walked through the image and is shown how to appreciate it. In the second scenario, the photograph conveys a sense of gravitas, the image is sublime. One might be breath taken by the sheer grandeur of a mountain or the vastness of the sea. The aesthetic value of the image is in its ability to astound.
In the third scenario, the photograph is emotionally charged; it conveys strong feelings. These feelings may be of love, loss or intrigue, for example. Images can also fall into more than one of these categories. For example, the sunset photograph may both astound and adhere to the rules of classical composition.
Images that fall outside of these parameters such as photographs of everyday things may be disregarded by the layman. Mundane photographs do not leave anything for the viewer to ‘grasp on to’ and the photograph appears to have no particular subject. Therefore, the layman does not assign any aesthetic value to the image. The main theme of the essay is that of an inquiry into what makes mundane imagery aesthetically valuable to some. Is there a certain acquired taste that can be developed when looking at images?
Everyday photography: Aestheticising the mundane
Every day photography concerns that which is deemed familiar, objects and situations we might encounter in day-to-day life. To paraphrase Thomas Leddy, a theorist in the field of everyday aesthetics: ‘It is necessary to draw some sort of distinction between the aesthetics of everyday life ordinarily experienced and the aesthetics of ordinary life extraordinarily experienced. However, any attempt to increase the aesthetic intensity of our everyday life experiences will tend to push those experiences in the direction of the extraordinary.’
Perhaps then, according to Leddy’s reasoning, when I decided to photograph the metal crates in the loading bay, I too was pushing the ordinary into the realm of the extraordinary. Highlighting the soft gradation in light, am I not also in awe of the picturesque nature of natural phenomena (albeit on a smaller scale)? Thomas Leddy also points out that the ordinary is uninteresting or boring and only becomes aesthetic when transformed into art. Leddy goes on to explain that: “For us to make an aesthetic appraisal of an ordinary chair, for instance, we must first experience that chair as being different from, and having greater significance than, the other objects in the room (including the other chairs).”
To comment on the argument again, with reference to the example of the metal crates; it is possible that one might find aesthetic merit in the crates because they experience that the crates have more significance than their surroundings in terms of aesthetics. This however does not explain why the security personnel found no aesthetic value in the crates. One might begin to find an answer by again looking towards Leddy, who uses the term “aesthetic attitude” to refer to a certain readiness to perceive the object metaphorically. This may partially explain the security guard’s dismissal of the aesthetic merit of the scene. His attitude was not that of metaphor, rather, it was quite literal.
Another argument that Leddy makes is that objects have an ‘aura’ that permeates them and affects how we experience them which is somehow greater than the object itself. He claims that this aura is not necessarily aesthetic but the heightened significance of the object which may in turn enhance the aesthetic merit of the object. Although a compelling argument, Jane Forsey takes issue with the line of reasoning in her article “Appraising the Ordinary — Tension in Everyday Aesthetics”. She points out that even if she grants that some objects have auras that transform the ordinary to the aesthetic; there is no clear way to distinguish between the aesthetic aura an object might possess and other auras.
Forsey gives the example of an old, stained and battered mug that the owner refuses to throw away due to the fact it was given as a gift. She refers to this as the ‘aura of sentimentality’. It raises the status of the object while having nothing to do with its aesthetic merit. She therefore surmises that there must be a way to distinguish between the aura of sentimentality and the aesthetic aura.
When discussing photographs, however, one might be inclined to disagree with Forsey’s argument that aesthetics and sentiment exist wholly as separate entities. A sort of cognitive dissonance ensues in which the emotional value of the photograph and the perceived aesthetic merit are inextricably linked with one another. For example, a parent viewing a 30-year-old image of their now adult child taking his first steps might exclaim, ‘what a beautiful photo’, even though an almost identical photograph of another child may not garner close to the same aesthetic merit in their estimation.
Emotion in relation to aesthetics in photography
In the introduction to this article the argument was made that ‘laymen’ concerning photography and visual culture are less likely to find aesthetic value in photographs that do not convey a sense of sublimity, emotion or follow the conventions of classical pictorialism.
One might argue that the ‘aesthetic attitude’ as Leddy put it, is only invoked when the viewer is aware that they may be required to look at the image differently and therefore find the aesthetic value in an image. Afterall, one will likely not peruse a magazine in search of a new vacuum cleaner while considering the aesthetic merit of the photograph depicting a person cleaning a carpet. It would be unusual for one to comment on the tonality of such a photograph or to praise the well-diffused light in the image. Arguably, there has to be something in the frame that signifies the use of metaphor in assessing the photograph.
Emotion in relation to aesthetics in photography is somewhat of an anomaly, in that the aesthetic merit of an emotionally charged image is often misplaced and often not directly related to the aesthetic quality of the photograph itself. In Everyday Aesthetics and Photography, Thomas Leddy recounts the example of E. J. Bellocq, a man who photographed prostitutes in the 1970’s for advertisement purposes. The negatives were rediscovered and reprinted by photographer Lee Friedlander and subsequently presented in a museum exhibition. Leddy argues that although the photographs were “quite poignant and even beautiful, many of their aesthetic qualities may be more a function of Friedlander’s intentions than Bellocq’s”. The question arises of whether or not the images had aesthetic merit before Friedlander framed them or if the aesthetic value predated Friedlander’s intervention.
For Leddy, the answer to this question is ‘yes’, he argues that Friedlander must have seen some aesthetic value in the photographs and chose to do something with them. One might argue that although the images may have already been aesthetic to some extent, surely the real aesthetic value is in the recontextualization of the images and the glimpse into the women’s lives. Whatever the answer, it is quite clear that semantics play a large role in the aestheticization of amateur photography.
Indeed, the emotional impact of an image weighs heavily on the perceived aesthetic value derived from the photograph. In Photography: A Middle-Brow Art, Pierre Bourdieu uses a wedding photograph to propose four levels of aesthetics that are contained in the image. The fourth level is most relevant to this discussion. Bourdieu argues that “the photograph is aesthetic, insofar as it is associated with the wedding and also societal unity by way of solemnizing both.” Here, Bourdieu points out that the photograph reinforces a sense of social cohesion which is strongly related to feelings of belonging. He further illustrates that the aesthetic merit of in image may be arbitrarily assigned when strong emotions are evoked.
Jean-François Lyotard takes an opposing viewpoint in ‘Presenting the unpresentable: the sublime’, arguing that presenting the unpresentable is now the forte of abstract art and therefore photography has lost the ability to be evocative. Lyotard argues that this is the case particularly for amateur photography, positing that because the camera manufacturer essentially controls the outcome of the image, there can be no aesthetic experience found in the photograph. Leddy, on the other hand, viewed this argument as ‘over-intellectualised’. Explaining that the physical mechanisms by which a photograph comes into existence are almost invisible to the amateur photographer and the viewer of the photograph rather, it is the feeling that the photograph elicits that gives it aesthetic merit.
One would be inclined to agree with Leddy on this point of contention especially as one of the central premises of this essay is that the layman is likely to only appreciate an image on a superficial level. They would not consider the complex interplay of computer systems that goes into image making.
The sublime and aesthetics in photography
When one compares a photograph of an ‘ordinary’ box with a photograph of a crashing wave, positing that the layman is more likely to find aesthetic value in the latter; there is an implication made that the everyday and sublime are mutually exclusive. In fact, this is not the case, it is possible for everyday objects to be sublime even if they do not command the same gravitas as a natural disaster. If one takes the example of a flower in a garden, a photograph taken of it may not necessarily convey a sense of sublimity.
On the other hand, a photograph detailing every minute texture in a petal of the same flower might in fact convey a sense of sublimity. One might infer then, that the sense of the sublimity is at times in how the object is photographed rather than the object itself. Perhaps photographs that are sublime and are seen as aesthetically valuable are valued for similar reasons as the emotionally charged images discussed earlier.
The sublime evokes a sense of wonder awe and therefore strong emotion. By the same mechanism a person may misinterpret a highly sentimental image as aesthetically meritorious, so too might a person assign aesthetic value to a photograph that evokes a sense of awe. It would be rather difficult for one to be astounded by a photograph while also believing it to be undeserving of aesthetic merit.
Pictorialism and aesthetics in photography
Alongside sublimity and sentiment, the compositional and tonal elements increase the perceived aesthetic value of an image. This section of the essay will argue that apart from sublimity and strong emotion, the use of the techniques found in pictorialism are the only way for someone outside of visual culture to find aesthetic merit in a photograph. When a photograph is void of all three of these elements, it will likely be viewed as uninteresting, lacklustre or even vexatious.
Lyotard notes in ‘Presenting the unpresentable: the sublime’ that “Avant-garde painting eludes the aesthetics of beauty. In that, it does not draw on a communal sense of shared pleasure. To the public taste its products seem ‘monstrous,’ ‘formless,’ purely ‘negative’ nonentities.” He continues, stating that “when one represents the non-demonstrable, representation itself is martyred.” Perhaps this is also what happens (to a lesser extent) when a mundane photograph deviates so far from pictorial and compositional conventions that the viewer does not know what to make of it, thus no aesthetic merit is accrued.
Bourdieu, argues that the lower classes in society evaluate photography purely in terms of what is being photographed and the function it serves. Although one might agree with Bourdieu’s assessment, the argument that these particular ways of seeing are limited to the ‘lower classes’ seems outmoded. It may be more appropriate to replace ‘lower classes’ with another term to the effect of ‘those who are not inclined towards the visual arts’ as one might evaluate photographs literally, irrespective of class.
Nevertheless, Bourdieu’s observations help explain why people who have no interest in visual arts do not find aesthetic value in everyday photography. They are essentially viewing the image with the intention of deriving information from it. When certain tonal and compositional techniques are employed by the photographer, it signals to the viewer that the purpose of the image is aesthetic rather than informative.
As compelling as this argument is, it is not to say that every layperson will find aesthetic merit in photographs that utilise the conventions of pictorialism. This would be in opposition to Kant’s requirement that there are no a priori laws in reference to taste and aesthetics. This means that one cannot use deductive reasoning to conclude that people who are not inclined towards art will be inclined towards a photograph when certain compositional requirements are met since taste is so enigmatic and based on a multitude of variables.
While one cannot confidently conclude that laypeople are only inclined towards photography that is either sublime, emotionally charged or adheres to the conventions of pictorialism. It seems though, that laypeople have more of a tendency to view photographs in terms of the function they serve, unless one or all of the aforementioned elements are present. So, to answer the original question of what makes the photograph so elusive. It is elusive because the photograph does not firmly plant itself in the camp of art as painting does, nor does it plant itself in the camp of a tool used to derive information. In mundane photography, there are not necessarily any visual aids to signal to the viewer that the photograph is art rather than information. Thus, the person who finds themselves on the periphery of visual culture finds it difficult to assign aesthetic value to a photograph or loading bay that a practitioner might.
