The Progression of Portraiture On Photo Canvas
By Dominic Donaldson
Historically art and photography have remained remarkably distinct from one another. The use of the camera to capture images has been for the purposes of social documentation and personal prosperity, with emphasis on focus and framing. Alternatively art has appeared as paint on canvas to be admired for texture, line and colour. The new trend for Photo Canvas products to adorn the walls of homes and offices, cafes and bars blends the two disciplines together, but is it a successful union of creative talent or a fashionable phase that is destined to be a cliche in years to come?
Photographs in a frame have adorned walls in halls in many houses in a multitude of cultures. In fact, wherever photography has been accessible, photographic portraiture has been a popular successor to the painted depiction of relatives. For hundreds of years, having the family immortalised in oils was a sign of status and wealth; it cost a lot of money and took a lot of time to sit for a painter, and certainly wasn’t something the poor could afford.
When photography first came onto the scene, having a picture taken was also reserved for only the wealthiest of people. The equipment used was expensive, the processing delicate and the operation of the camera was not for anyone that wasn’t technically minded, a long way from our one click auto focus photography available to us today. They said at the time that photography would be the death of painting; if there was a machine that could capture exactly what was before it almost instantly, then what was the point of an artist spending months trying to accurately capture the likeness of a person before him or her.
Indeed, painted portraiture did go into decline, canvas portraits were slowly replaced by Daguerre vignettes in sepia tones and bit by bit the photo replaced the canvas. During the years that encompassed the Conceptual Art movement, the role of the photograph as a creative medium became more defined. There was a strong debate over whether a photograph was a documentation of something, as captured by a technician or if whoever took the photo could cast an artistic slant on the image.
By manipulating an image through the use of light, focus, angle and framing, the photographer was expressing creative freedom and proving that the camera did not necessarily produce a picture that was true to what was before it. In short, it was proven that the camera could lie and that the photographer had as much freedom of expression as an artist had over the final image.
It has only been a few years since this shift in perspective, and in that space we have seen photography become more artistic. It inspired a whole decade of ‘Athena’ posters and has even been the point of inspiration for a whole new painting movement known as photo-realistic painting; the portraits by these artists take a viewers breath away every time and help give an appreciation of what a camera is capable of capturing. Now there has been the introduction of the photo canvas, which brings back the canvas as a medium for presenting a portrait, albeit with a photo realism that is rarely found in even the most stunning portraiture.
The way the two disciplines are now sharing the best points of each medium can easily be seen, especially in the use of photographic software that can manipulate an image, rendering a photograph highly stylised. Because of this, the canvas is set to replace the photograph for family portraits, but without the prestigious association that portraiture has previously had. The new medium is affordable for many but the nature of the progression of photography can guarantee that the photo canvas will be superseded by the next movement in art.
Dom Donaldson is an expert in the photographic industry.
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