Art Photography by Benu Sen

Nature is beautiful but never artistic ‘per se’, for there can be no art without the intervention of the Artist in the making of a picture. Nature is just a theme for the artist, through which he establishes beauty.

Most Painter and photographer would agree that they are in pursuit of beauty, and the Art has beauty for its own. And yet beauty is an indefinable term. It is purely subjective and exists only in our mind. Definition of Art is very nearly as hard to formulate as the definition of beauty, and discussion of the subject is difficult. The term ‘Art’ stands for defining the man made things as distinct from the natural things. ‘Art’ is the organization of chaotic appearance into an orderly form. Art lies in every inch of nature and to visualise it by camera is a real job for the Photo-Artist. An Artist-Photographer must bow down to see something unseen, to tell something untold and thus to create something new, as art creations are emotional representation of facts and ideas. As per Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Art revels man’s wealth of life’. He further said that our living body has its vital organs that are important in maintaining its efficiency, but this body is not a mere convenient sac for the purpose of holding stomach, heart, lungs and brains, it is an image, its highest value is  the fact that it communicates its personality. It has colour, shape and movement, most  of which belongs to the superfluous that are needed only for self-expression and not for self-preservation. Until today what we commonly term ‘Art’, particularly if we choose to call it the Fine Arts, is almost holy. Naturally any intellectual activity with aesthetic  association loses cast if it cannot be associated with the Arts. And naturally  Art photography is undoubtedly one of the greatest art of the Twentieth Century. In this connection, it may be mentioned that every medium has its own characteristics, its own potentials and limitations, and requires a range of skills so that it may be competently practiced. The creative photography is a skilful utilisation of Art Photography, and yet some photographs are considered as Art while others are not. A photographer who is acutely sensitive to life, capable of coherent and organised thought structure, and has a strong urge to express views to establish beauty and truth, is a creative photographer, and his work is consider as Art. The beauty of a photograph is, in so many cases, the recorded beauty of its subject matter, and this is a healthy distinction between painting and photography. Photography is also capable of expressing visions and value as compelling as those of other arts. Photography is a new art and of course fine art. Lens of a camera can do nothing and the operation of the camera does not make sense unless handled with a purpose. Camera does not make picture automatically. It is sensitive, it is a concept, a vision of the World, vision of the mind. Since Photography is the art of miraculous instants of composition, gesture and expression, through Photography a moment is transformed into  eternity. It is also an art which often has to seize and fix what is already vanishing by the time–the temporality of an object is perceived. Naturally a Photographer must carry his trained sensibility around with him–it needs devotion to the medium and sensitiveness to turn that temporal into universal. Photography is mechanically very easy, almost anyone can become competent photographer but not a photo-artist. Some photographers of our country who claims to be a photo-artist, say that photography should be taking and not making. It is a foolish opinion, an opinion of slave. Because, it is known to everybody that a brush cannot produce a picture, paint and canvas cannot synthesise a picture unless an artist utilises them. An artist will act as a master and the canvas, brushes, paints will be treated as tools by him, and in his way an imagination will come into life and reveal through canvas. Similarly a Master Photographer should utilise his camera like a slave carrying out his master’s order, he comes into life through his  photographic medium. What comes out is, though a product of the camera, essentially his creation. Here camera acts as a painter’s brush. Camera does for a photo-artist all that a brush can do for a painter only when handled by one with creative faculty. In the end I must say that the very approach of Photography is through realism.

In this connection, I must throw some light on seeing system, which plays the most vital role in any visual art forms. In fact there are three ways of seeing, which are known as ‘Previsualisation’, ‘Instant visualisation’ and ‘Post visualisation’. Side by side it is also important to mention that every creator must possess an extra eye to look before and after. And that will result true creative Photography to Photo-Artist and a unique amongst the visual medium.