Photography’s influence on Painting

Fine Art Photography and its influence on painting in the late nineteenth century, and early twentieth century. 

 To be fair to photography, especially 'fine art photography,' painting has had a few millennia head start in developing its vast expressive palette. Invented just over two hundred years ago, in 1822, photography is a comparative baby.

 Below is the first photograph ever taken, by photography’s inventor, the Frenchman, Nicéphore Niépce

Today, this first photograph would be regarded as ‘documenting a subject’. It is far removed from ‘expressive photography’, or ‘Fine Art Photography’ as it has come to be known.  

 Up until the late nineteenth-century, photography was seen as a simple mechanical process for documenting reality with precision. As it became more widespread, however, some photographers began experimenting with their medium, playing, not only with subject matter, but with light, with lenses, and with darkroom processes, to produce conceptualised photographic images; images that rose above the mere surface of the object being captured on film.   

 The expressive techniques they used were certainly different from those used by painters, but the result was the same: images provoking a powerful emotional and thoughtful response. This was the beginning of ‘Fine Art Photography’.

 Photography was encroaching on the world of painting, not only in terms of its capacity to depict its subjects realistically, but in terms of its now increasingly expressive manifestations. With fine art photography continuing to snap at painting’s heels, where were the painters to go? They began producing images ever further way from depictions of the ‘real’. They delved into the mind, and - as in the case of the ‘Cubism movement’, led by Picasso and Braque - explored the very nature of perception itself. They delved ever deeper into the recesses of the mind, into the subconscious, giving rise to the ‘Surrealist Movement’ - its leading exponents, Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. 

 As painters departed, further and further, from representing the ‘real’, photographers followed. Painting, now, was starting to influence photography. Surrealism seeped into the work of photographers, early exponents of this form being, Angus Mc Bean, Florence Henri and Man Ray. Again, under the influence of painting, Cubist Photography emerged. This used photo-montage to create multifaceted perspectives of an object, landscape, or person. 

 Today, painting and fine art photography continue to influence, and mutually benefit, one another, creating an ever-richer pallet of creative and expressive tools. When Nicéphore Niépce invented photography and took the very first photograph, all those years ago in 1822, never, in his wildest dreams, could he have imagined the creative heights photography has scaled today.