Transcendental Values and the Photographer
A Look at Robert Adam's Beauty in Photography
Sep 28, 2009
For seasoned photographer Robert Adams, photography is a matter of integrity and relationship between a photographer and the world. Originally written in response to the 20th century,his book Beauty in Photography: In Defense of Traditional Values, was a treatise on preserving beauty, coherence, and hope in photographic expression. The call to such transcendental values is a timeless one, still as relevant today, and not only for photographers but the art world as a whole.
Truth and Landscape
In his first essay, Truth and Landscape, Adams regrets the scarring of the American landscape, and considers the human need for landscape in both art and reality, declaring that its inherent geography, autobiography, and metaphor “reinforce an affection for life.” “What bothers us about primordial beauty,” the author writes, “is that it is no longer characteristic” (Adams, 14). He explains that landscape art is a way of recapturing a record of place, and is a “rediscovery and reevaluation of where we find ourselves” (Adams, 20).
Beauty in Photography
The title essay, Beauty in Photography, examines what a photograph must achieve to attain beauty, as well as the merit of creating art that is significant while being less than beautiful. Beauty in the context of visual art, Adams believes, is Form; that is, a coherence and order that reflect the order of Creation itself. “The job of the photographer,” he attests, “is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope” (Adams, 24).
True art affirms life, and to successfully do so, must avoid cliché and offer a fresh suggestion of Form. It has a vast scope or diversity, and yet exudes the ease of execution that comes from a controlled and practiced hand. The greatest pictures appear uncontrived, rather than tricked out with extreme approaches and technology that estrange more than engage. The aesthetics of photography lies in simplistic and graceful expression, for “only pictures that look…easily made can convincingly suggest that Beauty is commonplace” (Adams, 30). A great deal of 20th century art, in Adams’ estimation, fails to adhere to this value.
An important or significant photograph may not necessarily be beautiful, Adams argues. Truth is a main objective for a photographer, and truth reaches beauty only if it is complete and whole. If a photo presents a limited truth, it earns an adjective lesser than “beauty.” Moreover, “beauty is, at least in part, always tied to the subject matter” (Adams 33). Adams stresses that some art, or some peoples’ perception of it, divorces the conceptual from the perceptual, leaving incompletion. Adams expresses that (at the time of his writing-1981) “painting has temporarily forsaken its historic concerns, allowing photography to take them up [while devoting itself to]…showy novelty in technique” (Adams 35).
Civilizing Criticism
If Adams’ essays indict anything, be it the contorted expressions of some contemporary art or the harm humans have done to the earth, he does not seek to condemn so much as attempt to be reconciled to the present condition of the world. He speaks from a place of understanding in his essay Civilizing Criticism in which he charges all beholders of art to approach works with reverent silence. He reminds “what the artist attempts to do is to make something that will convince us of life’s value…and effort made on our behalf that requires considerable risk and sacrifice” (Adams 53). Critics tend to be acerbic when reviewing art, over-killing a bad piece, when Adams’ believes that light works will rise of their own merit while poor art will die off on its own. He values critics, however, for there role as arbiter—to deliver justice by elevating what is good art and separate out the bad.
Three Key Questions
Adams does set forth some very useful criteria on how and how not to approach art. Judging sincerity, taking an artist’s biography into account, or employing “interpretive diagramming…[like] psychoanalysis” should all be avoided. The correct approach borrows from Henry James who proposed three questions for art:
- What is the artist trying to do?
- Does he do it?
- Was it worth doing?
The most effective critics, says Adams, are unsentimental, forget themselves and focus wholly on the piece, remember that no subject matter or human response unimportant, and above all, “help photographers of promise defeat…their own bad pictures” (Adams 60).
Photographing Evil
In Photographing Evil, Robert Adams concludes that visual art is not a medium most conducive to the discussion of evil. Good and evil are choices, and as such require a passage of time to show the reality of their implications. This is not to say that art does not confront evil, and a person may be motivated to photograph not as an artist so much as a journalist or reporter.
The latter are often vilified as inhumanly detached from their subject matter, but Adams argues that art always springs from genuine concern. “Society is endangered to the extent that any of us loses faith in meaning, in consequence. Art that can convincingly speak through form or significance bears upon the problem of nihilism and is socially constructive” (Adams 70). The author proclaims that ultimately photography- and art in general- help us rediscover beauty and confront life with courage.
Throughout his insightful essays, Adams writes with the humility of wisdom rather than the arrogance of knowledge. He speaks freely of his own dilemmas as a photographer and recalls the struggles of his younger days with the art form. Vocationally he may reside in the world of visual art, but there is also a strong literary background brought to his work. Evidently well-read and well-expressed in his discussion of such slippery subjects as art and beauty, Adams’ invokes Albert Camus, George Orwell, and James Joyce to bolster his arguments. He knows he treads on sacred ground and does so with deference and care.
Beauty in Photography: In Defense of Traditional Values
Aperture, 1981.
ISBN: 0893813680
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