David Bailey on the Art of Photography
I recently read an interview with David Bailey by Andrew Graham Dixon for The Telegraph, and as always Mr Bailey is interesting, witty and utterly to the point. Here are some quotes I found particularly worth keeping track of (AGD is Andrew Graham Dixon, DB is David Bailey):
AGD: Are photographs less powerful now because there are so many of them in the world?
DB: No, it makes the good ones even more powerful because it hasn’t taken away the good ones. The good ones are still there. Digital and Photoshop just moved mediocrity up a stop, that’s all. They’re still mediocre – they just look better.
Another nice one:
AGD: What’s really mysterious to me, because I think that photography is an art –
DB: So do I. Well, it’s not an art. There’s that old cliché that my old mate Duffy used to use: photography and painting aren’t art. It depends on whether the person doing it is an artist. It’s true in a way.
A nice reminder that photography is not about the equipment or about technical skill, but about content, vision and style. The most important factor is (still) the (wo)man behind the camera. The camera does not produce the masterpiece. The fact that digital has lowered the threshold for entry into the field has not altered that one bit.
Being able to easily produce images does not instantly make us a Henri Cartier-Bresson or a David Bailey, just like being able to easily publish a book via an online book-printing service does not instantly transform us into William Shakespeare.
Tags: Art, artist, digital photography, Photography, photoshop
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