My Interpretation of Photography's Syntax:

While a painting is about communicating the artist's inner world, photography could be conceived as a means of communicating the artist's perception of the outer world.

Within this frame of thought, I interpret my photographic activities as an effort to communicate selected visual fragments of my surroundings. In addition, I perceive the act of taking pictures as equivalent to the implicit formulation of an existential statement such as: "I exist, therefore this is the way I see the world".

This concept is perhaps not exclusive to photography but also applicable to other forms of art. The artist is implicitly within his/her work (Artifex in Opere). Creating the artwork then becomes an elliptical way of corroborating the artist's own existence, either through his/her own contemplation or fundamentally from the feedback received from other individuals.

If we assume that there are few casual elements within a picture and most elements within it have been chosen either consciously or unconsciously, there must be another meaning associated with photographs that go beyond the esthetics of the composition. This underlying hermeneutics adds an occult symbolic layer to the images that transcend the boundaries of individual fragments of work to step into the emotional and spiritual world of the photographer. The overall resulting pattern is clearly greater than the summation of its parts (gestalt).

I am very much attached to my cameras, I think that this feeling stems in part from my fascination with their precise mechanics, but nonetheless from the executive role they play in the process of image creation. The camera is an approximation of what the brush is to painting (Photography: from the Greek: φωτός (phōtos), genitive of light and γραφή (graphé) representation by means of lines), literally the photographic camera is the instrument that allows us to draw with light. However, there are some caveats with this analogy since there is no complete transparency during the process of image creation, the results are always inseparable from the syntax superimposed by the media and the camera. For example, a black and white picture represents the colors of a scene as gradations of grey but because we have the ability to see in color, we would never interpret this as being a literal depiction of reality.

Another example of image related syntax can be found on images produced with early photographic processes, in those days emulsions had a low sensitivity to light. A consequence was that most portraits taken during that period had to be done outdoors under harsh sunlight, having the subjects hold static postures for a long time. Understanding this syntax allows us to interpret why people looked so serious or event upset, their solemn appearance deriving from their stiff postures and hard shadows cast under their facial features.

I do not think it is essential to understand the underlying photographic syntax of an image in order to enjoy viewing a picture, but being acquainted with it could add valuable context to its interpretation.

Regardless of which technology is used, a photograph domain will always lay within the space where the artist's composition intersects with the mechanical action of the camera, which will capture, without restrictions, everything that exists within its field of view. Including those elements that the artist never perceived, consciously, or unconsciously, before pressing the shutter button.

Claudio Valdés,

Phoenix, May 7, 2012