Debate on photography versus paint

Photography will always be a lesser medium than paint

01 Nov 2010

Why Now

The great Henri Cartier-Bresson, a man who captured a thousand moments, once said that “photographers are the hunters, not the cooks.” But does that make photography a lesser medium? Are the likes of Robert Capa, Robert Frank and Cartier-Bresson himself always going to be inferior artists to Michelangelo and Monet?

In this Intelligence Squared debate, AA Gill concedes that photography “revolutionised the nature of art,” but interprets the motion as implying otherwise. Was it not, Gill asked, fundamentally about the exclusivity, about “who is allowed into the club and who is merely a snapper?”

Stephen Bayley disagrees. He opened his argument by saying that, “questioning photography would be like questioning sight, but the motion is about the medium, not what is art.” As such, paint is more subtle, wider in “scope and variety…far more susceptible to human interference and therefore allows for a better message.” In contrast, photography is “powerful but limited in expressive range,” as it depends most of all of on technology and equipment: “photographers are ‘dominated by their medium, not masters of it.” The photographer, Bayley concluded, is “more passive, less creative. He has to wait for his great moments; he cannot create them.

Event information:

First vote: For: 74, Against: 171, Don't know: 40

Final vote: For: 81, Against: 208, Don't know: 6

In the beginning was the challenge: how to use eye, hand and brain to represent the significance of the world to our fellow humans. There followed the sinuous cave paintings of Perigord; the rigid, sparkling mosaics of Ravenna; the stunning Renaissance discovery of perspective. And the fellow humans marvelled at the dexterity of hand and the conceptual ingenuity of eye and brain behind such visions, and glorified them as art.

But how do we feel now that the machine has interposed itself between ourselves and the world? Now that the dexterity of hand has been replaced by the finger’s click on the camera shutter? Now that the imagination of eye and brain has been confined within the rectangle of the viewfinder? If there is great art here, doesn't it lie in the creation of the camera itself rather than the pictures it takes? Is it not the genius of the scientists who devised the camera’s intricate mechanisms and powerful lenses that we should now marvel at, rather than the output of the adepts who operate the machine?

Or are we still too much in thrall to the notion of art held by our pre-industrial forbears? Shouldn't we just accept that art has been freed of its ancient constraints, and acknowledge that the finest photographers offer us an interpretation of the world quite as original as that of the great painters; that in the digital age, photography is now the medium that matters?

Speakers for the motion

Stephen Bayley

Broadcaster and consultant; Founding Director, Design Museum, London
José María Cano

Contemporary painter, internationally known for his ongoing series of paintings, The Wall Street 100
Michael Mack

Publisher & literary agent.

Chair

John Gordon

Founder of Xtreme Information and co-founder of Intelligence Squared

Speakers against the motion

A A Gill

Columnist and writer on The Sunday Times
Rut Blees Luxemburg

German photographer who explores urban landscapes at night. She is also a photography tutor at the Royal College of Art.
Chris Steele-Perkins

Magnum photographer who has worked extensively in the developing world and Japan, as well as documenting Britain.