THE LATE AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHER Jack Welpott once declared, “In my view, photography and painting really share one history. The influences that work on the one, work on the other,” and it’s certainly a perspective that carries much persuasive argument.
Fundamentally of course both photography and painting employ the same basic elements of visual art, considerations encompassing space, line, colour, depth and texture, the artistic process itself being inevitably different for each medium. To generalise, a painter begins creation with a blank canvas, slowly building a meaningful image whilst most photographers work with an arresting scene, incorporating available lighting. An artist uses paint, a photographer, light. Photography results from an immediate reaction that’s then distilled to capture an exact moment in time, while painting is usually a more laborious process. One…
