Lessons in Fine Art Photography

So it's been a while since I've posted - shame on me! I have kept on taking lots of pictures, just none of them have inspired a post just yet. However, this past week, I was privileged to soak in the expertise of two photographers that operate in a realm that I haven't much explored. Fine art photography. Is this some art school definition that has years of theory behind it? Not in the slightest, it's just how I view it.


To me, fine art photography is an odd place in the photography spectrum. All photography has a point - to inform, to challenge, to make a point. We have documentary photography, or photojournalism, which simply prevents life as it is. There is traditional portraiture, which can be documentary in nature, or it can present a specific vision of the photographer that isn't necessarily as simple as reality. And then there is what I see as fine art photography - photographs that are meticulously planned in order to convey a very specific point from the artist.

This week n Stockholm was Photography Week at the Fotografiska, my favorite museum here in Sweden. First up for me was a tour of Roger Ballen's Theater of the Absurd. This wasn't a mere tour. Roger Ballen himself led us through his exhibit. I will admit that for some reason, despite looking at some of Ballen's work, I still expected a more classical photography discussion of his work. Instead, I was treated to a sometimes confusing, but always insightful discussion on photography, art, and the human condition.

Ballen presented himself as someone exploring his own psyche, and representing that on camera with a mixture of photographs of people surrounded both by their own dwellings and simple drawings added to the scene (to be fair, some of the dwellings already had artwork on the walls). In the Theater of the Absurd, Ballen seemed to be presenting images with incongruous subjects and settings, sometimes making you laugh, other times making you cringe, all the while, making you think. I won't pretend to have completely understood Ballen, just as I doubt that anyone could ever understand every point made by an abstract artist, but his attention to detail and how even the smallest piece of wire in his photos were carefully calculated to completely "make" the photo impact the viewer. Check out "Head Below Wires" and note how the bends in the wires, the missing chunk of the Simpsons picture, the Jerry Mouse mask - they all create the same form that is mirrored in the man's profile. While you may not love the art, the craft behind it is unmistakeable, and a very valuable lesson in of itself.

The second day, I attended a talk by Jimmy Nelson, the photographer behind Before They Pass Away. It would be an injustice to try and summarize the points he tried to impart, but, here we go. Mr. Nelson strives to present the pride, beauty, and inner character of tribes at risk throughout the world. Rather than presenting them simply as they are, flaws and all, Mr. Nelson created intimate portraits, carefully posed (and composed) images of every day life within the 35 tribes he explored. While this format has come under criticism, it was positively fascinating (and inspiring), to see Mr. Nelson simply explain that, in the developed world, we often portray one another in the most flattering manner in photographs - why can this courtesy not be afforded to the "undeveloped" world? Post-processing be damned, Mr. Nelson has created amazing images that convey the uniqueness of all 35 of these cultures, some in their day to day life, some in their "Sunday best," all while giving these individuals the respect that any subject should get from a photographer.