Nature versus nurture, er, nature versus vision?
I love being in, and photographing, nature and the wilderness. But on the whole, I subscribe to the philosophy of artist, solographer, and photographer Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890) who wrote “I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions.”
Agreed. Even when the visions are of nature. Indeed, if everything comes from nature then Man Ray’s statement is tautologically true. There is no such thing as an artistic depiction of nature, such as a photograph, without a vision of what the image is to be, to convey, and to portray.
Related: My “Impossible” album on Flickr; upcoming Finding the Mysterious in Photography webinar, scheduled for October 24, 2020 in time for Halloween.
