Impossible Monsters
Imagination abandoned by reason creates impossible monsters. United with her, she is the mother of the arts, and the source of their wonders.
Those are the words of 18th century Spanish painter Francisco de Goya. I’ve always liked his work, not because he had amazing skills as a painter (he really didn’t) but because he was a real no BS kind of guy. As a court-appointed portraitist for royalty, he was assigned to paint portraits of kings, queens, princesses, etc. Unlike his predecessors and successors, he pulled no punches. If the darling little princess had a big nose with a giant mole, it was in the painting. How he kept his job (and avoided being executed) I’ll never know.
I certainly would do what I could to accentuate the positive traits in anyone I’m photographing, and remove anything unflattering or distracting (Photoshop rules!)
But back to the quote. “Imagination abandoned by reason creates impossible monsters. United with her, she is the mother of the arts, and the source of their wonders.”
I’ve been in many discussions before about whether photography was an art or a craft. I’ve met both sides of the coin. I once knew a fellow who knew everything to know about photography – the most minute intricacies of exposure, optics, mechanics, etc. He couldn’t take a good picture to save his life. On the other hand, I had a customer at the camera shop where I worked here in Knoxville who made some absolutely gorgeous photos. Calendar type stuff. Beautiful light, color, perfect composition … Didn’t know an f-stop from an effervescent cold preparation. Did she need to, getting such great photos? Did she need to have the same level of knowledge as the other guy? Of course not. She got great photos.
However … what if she did? What if she were able to combine that knowledge of the craft with the eye and the artistic spirit she already possessed?
I’ve always tried to maintain that balance of art and craft. Yes, I can get geeky about f-stops and shutter speeds, and discuss depth of field and circles of confusion and camera controls and camera models and hyperfocal settings and pixels and dpi until the cows come home and make fun of me for being such a geek.
But I’m also an artist. And having all that geeky stuff in the storage banks of my mind allows me to focus on the art side, while the craft side goes on automatic. I don’t have to think about it. It makes the art happen. My imagination works with reason, instead of it being abandoned.
De Goya's "The Sleep of Reason."
