Leaves on the ground

Our photographer looks down.

The leaves have been coming off the trees here in Alexandria for some time now.  When they fall on concrete, our photographer noticed that they can form several layers of images: the leaves themselves, and brown impressions that fade and grow indistinct.  The patterns they show interest him, and he has begun a project to capture them (unfortunately, he hasn’t had much time for it).

He thinks that these almost abstract images would certainly count as art if they had been painted.  If an artist had decided where to place each form, and how it should be shaped, the result would be a Painting.  (Whether it would be judged something worth displaying is a different question.)  But he found these by looking down at the ground; he didn’t even rearrange them.  So are they art?  He thinks so.  The photographer and the painter have this basic difference between them: the photographer works from what he finds; the painter starts from a blank canvas.  The attitude is different.  Our photographer remembers attending a display of landscape photographs, and overhearing a comment: “The picture would be so much better if that tree were over there,” something a painter would do as a matter of course, but much harder (in those days before Photoshop) for a photographer.  We suppose this matter has already been discussed in Art circles, back in the days of the is-photography-art debate, and settled  long ago.

But there is the nagging feeling that many people would see nothing in these images but leaves on the ground, something familiar and mundane.  Documentary, maybe, but not art, not expressive.  Well, that’s the danger of any realistic photograph.  And each person brings a different background.  One might see an unwelcome autumn task; another, a particular species of tree; a third would be reminded of cold weather coming.

The main question in his mind, though, is whether there is enough variety in these patterns to maintain interest across a body of work.  Are there enough different arrangements to warrant a collection of them?  Do they say enough different things to repay looking at several?  The same question could be asked of his technique of synthesized color pictures, where he has to admit many of his products are not very interesting.

Our backgrounds are in science, not art, so our photographer is pretty much on his own here.  But we hope he’ll find enough time to work up his project, maybe to the point of answering his question.  We do like some of his results.