What is ‘Photography’?
I think it’s more than appropriate to discuss the title theme of our art-form, namely ‘Photography’.
It’s a word we all use, so what is Photography anyway? This is something I’d inquire of students, in a live class, to ask for shout-outs. Yes, you in the corner? Ask the internet you say? Wiki? Why not?
‘Photography’ comes from the Greek, meaning ‘light drawing’ or ‘light picture’. The Wikipedia Photography page puts it as ‘drawing with light’.
Almost all photographs are rectangular, sometimes square, or rarely, circular or oval. But the overwhelming majority are in rectangular ‘frame’.
Out of all the world, all time and all space and all existence we perceive, the photographer places that frame somewhere, to say ‘look at this’, ‘this is what I want you to see’, ‘this is the story I want to tell’.
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The act of photography is selecting, out of the macrocosm, a short story about oneself. ‘This is what I selected’.
