The Artist and the Camera

This article was originally published on my Typepad blog on November 5, 2012

The Artist and the Camera: Degas to Picasso is, in spite of its often abstruse text, a fascinating look at a number of late nineteenth century artists who interacted with the relatively new medium of photography and whose work was thereafter strongly influenced by it if not totally transformed. Based on an exhibit held in 2000 at the Dallas Museum of Art, essays by several scholars trace the revolutionary impact photography had on the nineteenth century art world. The stories of several of the most prominent artists, such as Degas, Rodin, Brancusi and Picasso are already well known; but the influence photography had on a number of others, such as Moreau, Munch, Khnopff, Mucha and even Gauguin, has been more obscure.

What's most interesting is the artists' almost unanimous insistence that photography was not an art form in itself but merely a mechanical means of reproduction that could assist traditional artists in the development of their own work and document it more thoroughly than had hitherto been possible. This was true even of artists, such as Degas, who vigorously pursued photography for its own sake and built up a considerable body of work. What comes across here is the fear these artists had that photography could one day supplant their own processes to offer a more faithful vision of the world about them. Perhaps the best known case is that of Rodin who began by totally distrusting photography only to arrive at the conclusion that use of the medium by a great photographer like Steichen could result in a collaboration that would create new levels of meaning to those who viewed both his sculptures and Steichen's photographs of them. Certainly, Steichen's nighttime photographs of Rodin's Balzac are masterpieces in their own right. The gum bichromate and direct carbon printing techniques that were used in creating the original prints are incredibly complex.

The reproductions of both artwork and photographs in the book are of high quality and present their arguments much more forcefully than does the accompanying text. Unfortunately, many of the essayists, while no doubt quite knowledgeable on the subject at hand, write in a forced academic style that can be quite difficult for the general reader to follow. This is a shame because so many of the ideas presented are of interest not only to scholars but also to photographers and artists who wish to learn more of the interaction between early photography and other forms of artistic media.