I encountered your “compelling fictions” theory on Paul Butzi’s photo-musings site and I considered and reacted to the theory in its relationship to photography. My reference to the difference(s) between sculpture and painting was strictly addressing the notion that photography is radically different from other visual arts and that, if it was necessary to lump photography into an all-inclusive generic art thing to for the theory to work with photography, then I wasn’t buying in.

Additionally, I really wasn’t paying enough attention to your use of the word “fiction”. Objectively, I subscribe to the medium of photography as a medium of truth. Subjectively, I subscribe to the medium of photography as equally capable of conducting business in the arena of Minor White/Alfred Stieiglitz’s Equivalence.

If my html for the Equivalence didn’t work, copy and paste this -http://www.jnevins.com/whitereading.htm

Very thoughtful and eloquent comment! You’re right, of course, that photography is rather special in its relationship to reality. But I think that the relationship is potentially far trickier than Joe Average Viewer assumes. I’m not talking about either Photoshop composites or the problems of interpreting totally “realistic” photos of people sitting around on 9/11/2001. I’m not talking about the layers of optical/chemical/electronic technology. I’m talking about your beautiful Adirondack photos (which I’ve admired for a couple years now). Though they could be called realistic in a certain sense, they have for me almost a feeling of idyllic dream worlds, places or moments captured that, I believe, most people would not have actively noticed if they had been there. It’s clear that there’s a closeness to reality, but it’s also clear that the photographer plays a significant role–at least with what I consider quality photography.

Maybe we’re just talking about degree of emphasis on the different aspects of what leads to a photograph. I personally incline to your perspective as I understand it. But almost any point you can pick on the objective-subjective spectrum, there are photographers practicing there. And regardless of where a particular photographer chooses to operate, eventual viewers are going to have to interpret for themselves.

I think that’s true, up to a point. But it also ignores the fact that what you choose to show, and in what context, influences the “objective” reality a viewer sees.

This is evident when looking at Paul’s photo above of the sand dunes in the Sahara. I mean the green hills of Montana. I mean the view from the parking lot of McDonald’s, looking away from the oil refinery.

I think there is great danger in lumping the arts together when making statements like Arthur’s. While they do share some common traits, they really are quite different.

You make some very good points about photography’s apparent ability to capture things as they are. Indeed, photography seems to unique in this regard. I’ll give this issue further consideration when I have the time to do so.

As for the distinction between two and three dimensional artworks, it is indeed an important one. I too become suspicious when philosophers and other writers pontificate about a generic ‘art’ without bothering to distinguish (for example) music from the visual arts–much less the finer distinctions you make. That said, I’m not sure how you think the difference between sculpture and painting effects my “compelling fictions” theory.

I think there is great danger in lumping the arts together when making statements like Arthur’s. While they do share some common traits, they really are quite different.

Although both are visual in nature, Sculpture is 3D and can be touched and felt, painting is 2D and it’s rarely a good idea to touch and felt a painting. Big difference, not only in the object itself, but in the manner in which they can be experienced.

There is also a big difference - a defining difference - between photography and its most closely related art, painting. Although both are primarily 2D, photography is bound by its relationship to the “real/literal” in way that painting is not.

In photography’s infancy, most painters realized this and abandoned the domain of the “real/literal” to the medium of photography. Oddly enough, early photographers also abandoned this formal characteristic of the medium in order to be considered more like painters, that is to say, “artists” rather than mechanistic operators of recording “machines”.

In fact, except for photography that relies on heavy-handed (not necessarily bad) manipulation, all photography begins with much more than a passing sense of literal “truth”.

Photo theorists and academics have spent a great amount of intellectual coinage trying to convince that this just isn’t so. This seems to be driven, in large part, by their need for things to conform to a theory in order for it to be understood. Hence their near slavish devotion to concept-based photography that references their theory.

Because photography, even very “literal” photography, has the capacity to deal with “intuition and hope” - what some might label “compelling fictions”, ideas that are subjective, they seem to come to the conclusion that photography cannot be objective.

Well, how about the “theory” that photography can be both without abandoning it connection to the real/literal?

How about reveling in photography’s formal and defining character to portray to the “real/literal”?

Hell, forget photography, how about deciding as a culture to start dealing with the “real/literal” instead of being enthralled by the “compelling fictions” that are very often foisted off as “truthiness”?

Photography, apart from the other arts, is uniquely capable of dealing with and presenting the real/literal in a way that can change the way we see and deal with reality.

I saw Providence 30 years ago. The way that I read its message - evolving from chaos to a calm, mysterious depth - seemed a worthwhile way to live.

Interesting point - there’s more than one kind of mystery.

I’ll have to grab that movie and watch it, too.