Several years ago, a photograph by Canadian Jeff Wall sold at a Christie’s auction in New York for more than $3.66-million (U.S). Entitled Dead Troops Talk, the 1992 photograph depicts a battlefield with dead soldiers coming back to life and engaging in what Mr. Wall describes as “a dialogue of the dead.” Wall used costumes, makeup and special effects to stage the shot, photographing his actors separately or in groups and assembling the final image as a digital montage. Today, Dead Troops Talk reigns as the world’s third most expensive fine art photograph ever sold.
While most photographers don’t expect to reap such an extraordinary sum for their creative work, the price tags have certainly put the spotlight on a genre that’s hard to define. Some say fine art photography − a.k.a. art photography or contemporary photography − involves images created with a particular vision or emotion in mind.
Others say it’s anything but commercial commissions. It can be staged or natural and it can mesh into other worlds, such as fashion and journalism. Or, as photographer Joseph Hartman, based in Hamilton, Ont., puts it: “Excuse the pun, but it’s not black and white. There’s a lot of grey area.”
Still, one thing is certain: fine art photography is gallery-worthy.
According to Andre Guichard – curator and co-owner of Gallery Guichard in Chicago, as well as national curator of the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series international competition for emerging artists – its origin dates back to the 19th century and it’s now recognized as an important and innovative medium of contemporary art.
Compared to fine art painting and sculpture, fine art photography remains a niche market, says Guichard.
“Instead of merely capturing a realistic rendition of the subject, the photographer’s intention is aesthetic,” Guichard says of fine art photography. “Its value lies primarily in its beauty.”
Hartman concurs. In 2005 he dropped out of medical school to take up photography in a serious way. One of his first projects was snapping construction projects along Highway 69 in central Ontario. He knew the route well from his travels to and from school and the family cottage and was intrigued by changes the land was going through as construction scraped away layers of the Canadian Shield’s Precambrian rock. It was his first foray into fine art photography and earned him an apprenticeship with Edward Burtynsky, one of Canada’s leading fine art photographers.
In Hartman’s experience, fine art photography is original work that has a developed idea and projects a compelling message or feeling to the viewer. To that end, he’s been travelling the country for the past three years photographing more than 130 artists’ studios for an upcoming exhibition and book. And as the son of an artist, Hartman, now 38, visited many studios when he was growing up. This precipitated the idea “to share the beauty and intimacy” of these interesting spaces and “show the diversity of Canadian painters and sculptors.” The photographs range from backyard tents to specially built workshops and convey the owners’ unique personalities.
“It’s not up to me to tell people what they should take away from the photographs,” says Hartman. “But the important thing is that there’s a quality to the artwork and to the photographs that allows that to happen.”
Fine art photography has also allowed photos to take on what OCAD University photography professor Peter Sramek calls “multiple lives.” Gallery exhibitions, he explains, permit photos originally intended for a particular audience to gain wider attention and create new experiences. He uses world press photo exhibitions as an example.
“Many people will see those photographs outside of the media context that they originally were produced and published in, so the images can have multiple lives and can be quite powerful, as opposed to daily news where these photographs appear and disappear,” he says.
With many universities such as OCAD slotting photography into their fine arts programs, we can expect to see more intriguing work hanging in galleries and museums. Guichard says fine art photographers have continued to rise to the top of the industry and many have become Artisan Series finalists since the competition’s inception seven years ago in the U.S.
Last year was the first time it was open to Canadians, with fine art photographer Patrick Lightheart of Toronto becoming a regional finalist.
“Photography always kept itself a little bit separate,” says Sramek. “But it has now become a very central practice and a medium within contemporary art, as opposed to sitting outside a fine art context. You’re much more likely, at any exhibition you go to, to see photography as a medium within contemporary fine art.”