Photography versus painting

Both visual arts. Both produced on a flat, two-dimensional surface, yet capable to implying depth of meaning and of space. The standard distinction given between the two is in the approach to making the image, its starting point, and the process of choosing what ‘goes in and what is left out’.

Starting with a blank canvass, the painter chooses what to add. The photographer, starts with a scene and chooses what to omit. Composition, areas of focus, depth of field and so on, and so forth.

So, can half a face say more than a full visage, provoke a different reaction from the viewer? Can I omit colour and expect that a black and white image will hold the attention more? Does a downward gaze and a half-smile invite more questions than more complete versions of the same? What changes with a vertical orientation as opposed to the more common horizontal treatment? What is best left out-of-focus, and by how much?

These are the elements the photographic art, the alchemy of the photographer. Executed in a moment - not the hours, days, or weeks, for the painter’s magic to emerge. Accepting there are as many elements beyond his/her control than within it. The starting point is provided, not invented.

This image is from a Kyoto tea-house, 2015, where Geiko and Maiko, served us with grace and economy of movement, with patience and perseverance, with respect and with curiosity. What to leave out? The zen gardens of those lands speak to an understanding that perfection is obtained once there is nothing left to remove, not once there is nothing left to add, a concept that, in a different continent, Leonardo might have appreciated. Not many others, perhaps, for Japan can be a world that few from the outside can claim to understand in full.

The mystique adds to the allure. Thus it ever was. A partial view - a fragment - of their world is the best a photographer might hope to express. And so, to present the subject ‘incomplete’ seems only apt.