Posted by Esther Kontny on
Photography has many forms; from negatives to scans or digital to print. We can view photos on our phone, in a book, in frames hanging on a wall and giant sized canvases. However, most of the images we interact with on a daily basis live on a screen. That’s why it’s exciting when we get the chance to hold a printed image. Once it has taken on a physical form, our relationship to it changes and it becomes something new. Today, I would like to break down how we interact with photos, and artwork in general, based on this context. Lets start with the most prevalent, digital images.
DIGITAL IMAGES
Most of the time when we come across digital images it is in the context of social media. With 3.81 billion social media users around the world (according to Data-Reportal) we are posting and consuming more content then ever before. The result? Many teens have reported image fatigue and have experienced a decreased ability to remember or recall images they have seen on any given day. That is the ephemeral nature of the internet, and it is further emphasized by the lack of impact a single image has on the viewers.
When you look at a photo in this overly saturated environment things begin to blend together and you feel as if you’ve seen the image a thousand times before. Take that same photo and put it in the context of a portfolio website. Same image different context. In this case your consumption of images reduces to the photos on the site and they are surrounded by other photos that support the work, rather than reduce it. It is still on the internet and therefore only lives as long as the viewer chooses to stay on the site, but the artist has a bit more control on creating negative space around the image and possibly limiting it to be viewed one at a time. In the context of a portfolio website, an artist can then start to evolve into series of images that speak to a similar subject matter or discourse, giving the artwork some weight and context.
There is one last digital context I want to discuss, and that is in the context off of the internet. Since I am photographer I interact with a lot of my photos in a digital sorting program on my computer. Whether I am shooting on a digital camera or a film camera, they always end up on my hard drive to be sorted, edited and stored. I probably have thousands of files on there most of which I don’t remember I have until I go searching for one particular image in all of my different sub-folders. For most people this looks like their camera roll on their phone. We’ve got our outtakes next to our snapshots, next to our vacations at the beach. The context here would be our lives, daily and milestones. Scrolling through only on occasion when we are in search of a photo we remember was taken and passing by all of the images we had forgotten.
PRINTED IN BOOKS
Similar to photography, books have taken a turn due to digital consumption. But with the resurgence of beautifully curated books and ornate book covers, it has proved to the publishing world that while reading on an e-book app or kindle is more convenient it is an entirely different experience. The print form has become an art object in itself and bookstores are still popping with customers looking to peruse a shelf of beautifully curated books to take home for their collection. A cookbook written by a celebrity chef is not simply a list of recipes anymore than it is a piece of art. When buying a hardback book you are choosing a statement piece for your dining room table or kitchen, filled with beautiful images and illustrations that can be enjoyed by guests as they flip through the pages.
In a similar way, photography shows up over and over in print and takes the form of a book or magazine. And depending on the context, it can be used as part of an advertising campaign, illustration or in some cases artwork. Our relationship to photographs that are printed in a book is very different to scrolling through social media. Instead the physical act of holding a book and flipping through the pages captivates our attention. We don’t have the buzz surrounding us of click through links or advertisements that so often fill a blog. It is intimate and personal.
When you get your hands on a beautifully put together photo-book you can experience storytelling at its finest. In contrast to a singular printed image, the point of a photo-book is to take you on a journey. Each spread highlights the parallels between images and pulls together underlining themes. The design of a photo-book can be compared to a gallery curator, because they are both trying to create parallels and juxtapositions from proximity. The difference then being that a gallery is a group experience and a book can only be experienced with one or two people. A book can also be transported to both the indoor and outdoor spaces, allowing the context of the images to change based on where you are opening the book. By printing photographs in book form you are impressing some value onto it because it is no longer as weightless as the digital rendition.
FRAMED ARTWORK
This doesn’t only take effect in fine art photography, rather I would argue any time you choose to print a photograph you are giving it a longer life. Now that we’ve covered book formats, lets discuss the framed photograph. This also has context, but unlike a book that can travel to new spaces, a framed piece will most likely live in one spot for months/years at a time. The context for a framed piece of art is important both to the subject of the image, but also to the environment of the room. These two speak to each other and they can either clash or live in harmony. And unless you are trying to make a point, you are usually looking to find the latter.
When a photo lives in a frame it carries some weight, both metaphoric and literal. It takes up space on your wall or shelf and becomes part of the environment. The kind of presence it has in a room is dependent on how large the artwork is and the size of the room it’s hung in. For example, when you walk into a gallery most of the time the gallerist has made an effort to have the artwork standout with lots of space between each piece. With white walls and a discrete floor, our attention is on the artwork hanging not on the room.
In the context of a home, your walls aren’t always a neutral beige and there are other things like plants and furniture that fill your space. When you decide to add framed art to a room the size of the image suddenly becomes important, along with the color/design of the frame and of course the image itself. You want to pick artwork that speaks to you, not adds to the noise. Whether it is incorporated into a gallery wall or is your statement piece above your mantel there is always context surrounding and informing it. Our relationship of the photograph cannot be separated from its surrounding once it is hung-up. You will revisit a framed image more than a book or a digital version because it is living in real time and space. This over time adds value to it.
My argument then is that we should fill our life with things that bring us joy and awe. To invest in printed artwork that will give us a break from the constant refresh of the internet and can serve as a retreat. That we would invest in things that could out last our life and be passed down to our family members. Something that doesn’t just add to the clutter and the noise but truly brings harmony and balance into the spaces we live in.
Written by Esther J Kontny
To find art to compliment your home, check out our gallery here.
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