Photography

Eastman Kodak’s motto, “You press the button, we do the rest,” marked the introduction of mass photography. With easy-to-operate cameras and flexible roll films invented by George Eastman in 1888, snapshots could be taken by everyone almost everywhere, not just by professionals lugging heavy glass plates, tripods and processing equipment into the field to expose their plates for minutes and sometimes hours. Photography is the “production of visible images by the action of light” (Encyclopedia Americana, 1989, 22:1). Until recently this exclusively involved a camera and a light-sensitive film, but the development of digital photography with electronic imaging, compact disks and computer enhancement now offers both the amateur and the professional new opportunities for interpreting what they see with the naked eye.

Cameras have many uses today. They are weapons, as suggested by the intrusive words we use to describe “capturing” something for propaganda or advertising; they are memory-makers used to preserve selected experiences as souvenirs; they are an art medium for aesthetic expression. These three uses of the camera have altered our way of perceiving. On one hand, art photographers see penetratively and intensively and can help others to do so; on the other hand, casual photographers armed with their so-called idiot-proof cameras snapping everything in sight in order to get it and take it home (which they cannot do), trampling on sacred sites without reverence or patience, are not really seeing at all. Sometimes they would be better off not taking pictures but simply looking at and being present to the scene. Making home movies (a series of still pictures that give the illusion of motion) and videotaping can extend this complicated process of seeing and not seeing even further (see Home Video). All this has happened in just under two centuries, but the idea behind photography has a long history and a rich theological foundation.

Humankind as Image-Maker

Replicating what one sees, interpreting its meaning and expressing one’s own feelings about it through some medium, so making something genuinely new, are part of the cultural mandate given by God (Genesis 1:28-30). Such creativity is evidenced in the earliest cave drawings and is the heart of true art. As with all aspects of the human vocation, making images comes with a temptation. It is all too easy to attribute ultimate meaning to the image one has created, to idolize it (Exodus 20:4; Romans 1:23) and to invest the devotion of one’s heart in a human creation rather than in God. The prohibition against making images of God and worshiping them is particularly illustrative of the problem; the image of God crafted by human beings (whether through graphic or theological expression) will always be something less than a personal God who is full of surprises and cannot be reduced to human dimensions. Idols “have ears, but cannot hear” (Psalm 115:6), in contrast to the living God, who “does whatever pleases him” (Psalm 115:3). This warning notwithstanding, making images is not only worth the risk; it is mandated. We were created to be cocreators, artistically designed to become artists, imagined into life by God (Genesis 1:26) to become imagining creatures.

Cultures influenced by the strongly anti-image bias of Islam tend to be anti-photographic. It is sometimes thought that photographing a person tampers with the essence of that person. In contrast, Christianity, founded on the miracle of the incarnation (John 1:14), has affirmed that images expressed in down-to-earth matter (paint or silver salts) can communicate truth in ways complementary to spoken or written words. Words can appeal to our spirit; art enters the soul through another door than intellect. In the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches a long tradition of iconography has flourished precisely because the Eastern church believed so strongly that the grace of God should be expressed through visual media (Baggley, p. 9). Making images is implicit in the holy materialism of the faith and its founder.

Photography is art and can be Christian art, precisely because it is not mere replication but a creative interpretation of reality, an externalizing of truth, an enfleshment, and not just an illustration of truth. It can be revelation. So photography, along with all other visual arts, is a way of knowing. It is a way of knowing with a long history.

Image-Maker as Shutterbug

The theory behind taking photographs was first enunciated by Aristotle, who described how light waves behave when projected through a small aperture (Encyclopedia Americana, 1989, 2:9). Building on this idea led to the development of the camera obscura in the Middle Ages. The camera obscura was a darkened room with an opening in the wall that created images (reversed and upside down). This was reduced in size to a box, thus permitting artists and architects to use the device to trace images, and with the development of light-sensitive materials using silver salts, semipermanent images could be obtained. The development of photography was spurred further by the Renaissance interest in reproducing nature and the increasing public demand for realistic portraits.

Eventually in 1830 this led to the daguerreotype (a silver-covered copper plate), which revolutionized portraiture and opened up expeditionary photography for travelers. With the development of paper prints from negatives in 1940, family albums and, equally important, illustrations for books and periodicals became possible. Further developments into the twentieth century included gelatin-based papers, user-friendly cameras, color film, flash powder and flash bulbs. Two new cameras, the Leica and Ermanox, predecessors of the 35mm camera, allowed people to take cameras almost anywhere, even to political conferences, inspiring the term candid camera (Encyclopedia Americana, 1989, 22:20). Eventually electronic flash, instant cameras, fully automated cameras, throwaway cameras and the digitalized camera have been developed and popularized. But to what end?

Over the decades cameras have been used as a tool for reproducing nature (the first real subject), for producing realistic portraits, for providing pictures of places and peoples seen by travelers and international ambassadors, for making social statements about the plight of minorities and oppressed peoples, for journalistic reports of wars and political events, for propaganda (during World War II), for advertising and fashion promotion and for artistic expression. Today art photographers try to express a meaningful slice of life, “the humorous, the bizarre, the typical, and the surreal associations of everyday life” (Encyclopedia Americana, 1989, 22:23). Undoubtedly the pervasive effect of photography has altered our expectations and our ways of learning. Since the picture-journals Life and Look started in the 1930s, we have come to expect pictures in magazines, newspapers and textbooks. But is one picture worth a thousand words? What does all this picture taking mean?

Shutterbug as Artist

An advertisement for a 35mm camera reads, “We take pictures to record our personal vision of the world.” As photographer Bob Llewellyn says, “Every photograph you make is a self-portrait” (quoted in Doeffinger, p. 10). Photographic realism is really an oxymoron because there is always a wonderful subjectivity in what the photographer sees through the lens of the camera. So along with the camera as weapon, aid to memory and art medium, we must add mirror. But the mirror is not used simply to know ourselves.

First, photography is for newscasting—showing to others a happening or unusual event that will arouse interest and stimulate reflection. The subject could be the positive delight of a child in turning on an outside tap and sprinkling herself with water or the awesome power of a tropical storm tearing up the concrete deck of a wharf. There is more than simple recording involved in this. The sacraments, festivals and memorials of the Old and New Testaments assist us to relive the past and interpret the meaning of the present in the light of something that has happened—a lived and relived history. In the same way photographs create living history, though not in the arrogant way claimed by some film advertisements that our picture creates an image that will last forever.

Second, photography is for communication in which the language “spoken” is not a string of intelligible words but the linkage of texture, line, shape, form and color into a fluent message that may “praise, carp, clarify, or obscure” (Doeffinger, p. 37). We cannot speak fluently in the language of photography until we know our subject well enough. The trouble often is that we have only a nodding acquaintance with what we photograph. We have looked but not seen. So our preconceptions take over, preventing reflection on the meaning of the subject and true expression of our feelings about it (Doeffinger, p. 37).

Third, photography is for celebration. A camera licenses us “to observe and delight in the world” (Doeffinger, p. 57). Just as Adam delighted in his wife (Genesis 2:24), so humankind is meant to turn the observation of creation and people into worship of God. We can do this in photographing the most common, everyday things, thus making, as photographer Edward Weston says, “the commonplace unusual” (quoted in Doeffinger, p. 22). Pictures of a meal set on a table, wrinkled skin, a bathtub, curtains in a window, a corn broom resting in the corner of a room, all help us revise our thinking about everyday life evoking feelings and spirituality.

What makes a good photograph is surprise (by showing an unusual perspective or an unusual subject), feeling (by creating a mood), relationality (by exploring the connections of life), wholeness (by expressing a viewpoint through composition) and simplicity (by “saying” only one thing clearly). There is so much more to photography than pressing the button and letting the processor do the rest. The camera sees indiscriminately, nonselectively, sweeping everything into its rectangular view. In fact the camera does not see at all. It simply records light. The human eye and brain, in contrast, focus on sensations that interest us because of our wants, preconceptions and feelings. We see what is in our heart, just as we speak what is within us. So to take a good photograph people must, paradoxically, train themselves to see as the camera does (nonselectively) and then compose the picture to express what they actually see (selectively). This is why most of the millions of pictures taken annually are snapshots (bullets fired at an object) rather than doors of perception.

Like all achievements of technology, mass photography is a mixed blessing. If the development of a universal photographic culture has become a way of knowing, it has also become a way of unknowing, a way of missing reality. If we vacuously snap everything in sight, we have allowed picture taking to usurp seeing; we express an unimaginative view of a world not worth celebrating and a God not delightful to worship. Probably all photographers can profit by becoming more contemplative, reflecting on their own feelings and preconceptions, their own beliefs and unbeliefs. Have we seen or merely looked? Do we know our subject well enough to respect it? Do we reverence life enough, as God-imaging and God-worshiping creatures, to revel in what we have seen? Can we savor it even if the picture does not turn out or we forget to take the camera along?

» See also: Art

» See also: Hobbies and Crafts

» See also: Movies

References and Resources

The Art of Photography (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life, 1971); J. Baggley, Doors of Perception: Icons and Their Spiritual Significance (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988); D. Doeffinger, The Art of Seeing (Rochester, N.Y.: Eastman Kodak, 1992).

—R. Paul Stevens