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NOTE: Thank you my readers for the overwhelming response (5000+) I got to my first article about art and photography: Is Photography An Art? I Got An Email That Says No. Because it was so popular I have decided to follow up with this my second article below plus a third article about the special capabilities of digital photography next week. You can also read my more technical articles here on PIXIQ on the subject of Experimental Digital Photography,  articles that discuss developing creative photographic techniques.

This article is in two parts:
1) The first part discusses photography's special strengths
2) The second part shows how these elements can be used to create great art when put together by a master photographer,Dorothea Lange

UNIQUE CAPABILITIES OF PHOTOGRAPHY
I believe that the primary strength of an art form lies in its unique capabilities, things that are fundamental and at the heart of the medium. Photography has a number of these.

== Photography is the art of light
This simple statement says volumes. No other major art form deals directly with light itself. We photographers are light artists.

To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it. - Dorothea Lange

== Photography is the art of timing
Because of the shutter, time and timing is a key element in photography -- and consequently photography can capture a sense of the moment and freeze an instant better than any other medium. Go back and look at photos in your family album from ten years ago if you want to see how well photography records smiles at a birthday and the years gone by, along with the emotions these evoke.

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. - Dorothea Lange

== Photography is the art of the real
When I take a photo (and don't add extra software elements), I have taken a shot of a real thing, in real time -- and this aspect of photography can be quite emotional and expressive. And even if the shot is in a studio, it is still real. The light that hit the film or the light sensors came from real things in real time.

Just about every news story I have seen on TV about a house burning down, includes a statement from the owners who say, "Well, at least we were able to save the photographs" showing how important, how irreplaceable and how real they are.

== Photography mimics the eye, often giving viewers the feeling they are seeing through the photographer's eye
The camera lens is similar to the human eye, although there are significant differences. As a result photography can deliver a sense of 'you are there' better than any other medium.

== The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
== While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.
Dorothea Lange

Each of these unique strengths can become a major element in the creation of a photograph, and, when successful, has an impact unmatched by any other art form. (Photography has other capabilities, but I will save these for another article.)

A RECIPE FOR A GREAT PHOTOGRAPH
Okay, I'm going to try to keep it simple -- but realize that each one of these elements mentioned above: light, timing, reality, the photographer's eye can take a lifetime to understand.

Let's take light in a candid situation: There is the overall quality such as diffused, bright, single source, multiple sources and if it is multiple -- the normal situation -- each light source has its own character which mixes with other light sources. Then there is the angle and the large variety of shadows created along with reflected light. Plus there are reflections themselves which have a quality all their own depending on the reflecting material. There is light that flares or overexposes. In a candid situation the light can change rapidly. And in addition the tonal range of the photographic medium has to be understood -- as the eye can see a wider range of light and dark than film or digital light sensors can capture.

This benefit of seeing...can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image...the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.
- Dorothea Lange

Think we're done -- far from it. What I just outlined describes black and white photography. Add color and add a whole new set of variables. There is the color of each light source which changes if the light is reflected since it takes on the color of the surface that reflects it -- and virtually every lighting situation contains reflected light. There is the decision the photographer must make about color balance, i.e., which light source is considered white. Plus there are color harmonies -- or lack of them -- and the overall mood of the color such as pastel, highly saturated, or nearly monochromatic.
Okay -- enough of our quick tour of light. I could go into the same amount of detail about the other three capabilities but I'm trying to keep it simple. Now combine two of these capabilities or three or all of them together (light, timing, reality, and seeing through the photographer's eye) and what do you have in the hands of a master? A great photograph.

Put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. - Dorothea Lange

EXAMPLE OF A GREAT PHOTOGRAPH
Dorothea Lange's famous 1930s portrait of a destitute pea picker in California is a perfect example. When she took this, she had been a photographer for over 20 years. This iconic photo, known as Migrant Mother, became quite famous in its time because this close up of an individual and her children made real in human terms the devastation that was inflicted on millions of people during the Great Depression.

Like any great art we can analyze it and over analyze it -- but in this seemingly simple and direct picture there is a lot going on. To begin this uncropped 4x5" photo is a masterpiece of composition, reality, timing -- with two children the scene no doubt changed seconds later -- and portraiture along with the sense that we are seeing what the photographer saw.

I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were -- their pride, their strength, their spirit. - Dorothea Lange

And while this photo is primarily emotional, it avoids being sentimental. We can read the anguish in the mother's face -- the hard work she has done in her wrinkles and the uncertainty about her future in her look. But it is also a masterpiece of form, shape, texture, soft even lighting and positioning -- imagine the same photo if the woman's arm was in a different place or if it was shot just a few feet further back or from the side or if the light was bright sunlight or the children moved.

In fact you don't have to imagine some of these -- go down to the bottom of the page and see three of Dorothea's other photos from this session, shots that were taken at the same time, but without the same impact.

And still technically there is so much more: the almost black shades in the upper left to the almost white shades in the lower right; the vertical lines of the pole and the woman herself; the bright light on some strands of the children's hair and the almost perfect natural lighting on the woman's face; the different types of fabric that make a pleasing composition in themselves. And this photo also reminds a viewer of Madonna and Child, of similarities in Renaissance and Western art, of -- okay, okay, enough.

Part of my point is this: you do not have to know any photography stuff to feel the impact of this photo. But a seasoned photographer, like the readers here at PIXIQ, can understand the elements that came together. It's a bit like hearing a heart wrenching song: a musician can analyse its structure -- the key changes, the rhythm, the repetitions -- but as a listener you don't need to know any of that to feel the deep emotions that the song conveys.

...a line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
William Butler Yeats

I have focused on Dorothea Lange because
1) she was an accomplished photographer
2) she believed she was an artist whose medium was photography
3) she had a very clear vision of what she wanted to achieve with her art form photography, which she did
4) her work has been widely exhibited in major art museums and her work is in the permanent collection of the prestigious Museum of Modern Art in NY, NY (MOMA)
5) these photographs for this article are available without any copyright issues since they were shot for the US Farm Security Administration (FSA) and are available from the US Library of Congress  which states, "There are no known restrictions on the use of Lange's 'Migrant Mother' images."

SEE THE OTHER PHOTOS IN LANGE'S SERIES THAT LEAD UP TO HER FAMOUS SHOT

Here's what Dorothea Lange had to say about taking the Migrant Mother shot, "I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction."

You know, so often it's just sticking around and being there, remaining there, not swooping out in a cloud of dust: sitting down on the ground with people, letting children look at your camera with their dirty, grimy little hands, and putting their fingers on the lens, and you just let them, because you know that if you will behave in a generous manner, you are apt to receive it, you know? - Dorothea Lange

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For more about my approach to photography see my book: Experimental Digital Photography.

Dorothea Lange walked with a permanent limp from a bout with polio. She used a cumbersome 4x5" SLR Graflex camera with a back that swiveled for vertical shots. See more about the type of camera she used at this site. Photo available from the Library of Congress.

Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore. - Dorothea Lange

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