Vince Aletti: What is Photography?

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What is photography? Everything from a daguerreotype to a digital print, from Man Ray’s rayograms to Adam Fuss’s photograms, from sand-toned carbon prints by Julia Margaret Cameron to manipulated color Polaroids by Lucas Samaras to Jeff Wall’s meticulously constructed, computer-manipulated fictions. It’s Nadar and Penn, Brassai and Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin and Gilbert & George, “Migrant Mother,” “Dovima With Elephants,” and that snapshot you found at the flea market last week.

You may never have seen the photograph outside of a book or a magazine, but it exists somewhere as a print on paper and even if it fades or gets torn or burned up, that format—that physicality—defines it for me. Some of the images you’ve captured on your cell phone may attain the status of photographs, but most of them are just pictures—notes, reminders, information—that you’ll probably never look at again. Photography is not just noticing or recording something; it’s seeing. It involves the mind and the eye. It involves contemplation, connection, understanding, and time. It might appear effortless; it is almost never that.

Vince Aletti, critic and curator

Photograph © Cory Rice

What Is Photography? Let's Find Out!

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