Fotograf Magazine

Historically, the relationship between painting and photography has been an uneasy one, with painters struggling to find solid ground after the invention of the photograph, and photographers struggling to be recognised as true artists. For painters, making it look like the real thing was not enough anymore, and ”just pushing a button” branded the camera as the tool of choice for amateurs and enthusiasts. Munch, famously saying the camera would not be of much use unless one could employ it in hell or heaven, neatly put forward the reason for the vengeance of brush and oils – the emphasis on the malleability of paint so as to effectively render and convey the realm of human emotion. Photography, by comparison, was still inflexible, colourless, crude and unexplored. Much has changed since the late eighteen hundreds. Photography is now a perfectly legitimate artistic pursuit, on a par with painting, or perhaps even more important than painting, one could argue, with technology becoming more flexible and powerful by the day. Some would even say that ranking and comparing the two fine art disciplines in this manner makes no sense anymore – that they have become complementary.