October 25, 2011

The Image Makers And Photography

Photography is a fascinating art. It expresses the cultural and social values and promotes the culture of the people of a country. It also helps in introducing the way of living and their style to the modern world. It preserves the culture of the people of a country.

Photography is a fascinating world. Photographs are full of colors and life. Photography is the art or process of taking photographs.

The digital age has arrived and taken over the world of photography. The old fashioned way of taking photographs has been vanished. In days gone by, photography was not an art but a craft used primarily to capture faces and portraits of subject seated primly and stiffly in front of lavish backdrops that were supposed to look artificial as their poses.

Photographs, or, rather, portrait photography, was then a serious business and not just for those posing but also for those behind the cumbersome and unwieldy cameras that required equally huge flashlights. Images were then stored on negatives and not on computer chips. Touching entailed working on negative and positive forms of film and color was added by hand. The traditional may not have been recognized as artists but they truly were-the proof of this lies in the flourish with which they added color to black and white world they captured and knowing eye with which they picked the right tints and hues to use.

But this pain staking craft has all but died out. Images are now stored on machines and touched up in photo shop and this has sounded the death knell for the whole world of photography. Even the act of taking a passport photograph, portraiture in its own way is no longer required.

Photographs try to capture a world that after some time become the part of history and helps to remember the image makers and people who are gone away.

Indeed as critic John Berger once said:

"All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget."

Photographs is used to express the social and cultural life of people of a country. It as also used to capture the culture, cultural values, festivals and beauty of some specific regions like Kalash Valley and Cholistan desert etc, of Pakistan. It helps in introducing the ancient cultures to the modern world. Photography preserves the culture history and art of the people.

As the culture and history are the heritage of a country so it should be introduced to the modern world. Photography familiarizes people with our ancestors heritage.

Hence, photography is a very realistic art and gives life to photographs.

According to Elliott Erwitt:

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I have to found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them".


View the original article here

No comments: