I just heard someone say that “photography makes the invisible visible.” It occurred to me that good photography can often do something even more special, namely make the visible visible.
Think about it.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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I hadn’t thought about the possibility of seeing the first statement (“making the invisible visible”) as illogical. From a semantic point of view, I think that makes some sense. But if we add a few words to the saying and think of it as “making (what is otherwise) invisible visible,” it does makes sense—and I think that is what the original really means.
To riff on this a bit more, on one level the original saying reflects something that might seem fascinating but perhaps not transcendent, namely that a camera lets us look at objects that we might no otherwise be able to look at—the very small, the very fast, the very slow, etc. In other words, via the photograph we can see things that we otherwise would be unable to see.
My idea is that a photograph can also show us things that were actually there and potentially visible all along but which we did not see and would not have seen had they not been photographed. This is partially about what the photograph itself can do to subjects—transform an ephemeral event/subject that might have seemed inconsequential into something that is fixed and permanent and subject to viewing and re-viewing. A thing photographed takes on a different meaning than the same thing unphotographed.
Related to this but different enough to be a different thing, the photograph shows us what was there but which we failed to notice or which we saw in a different way. This is at least a little bit related to my idea that a really great photograph tells us more about the photographer than about the thing in front of the camera. The photographer sees in ways that are different from the ways in which other people see, and this ability to find and isolate and present things that might otherwise seem unworthy of notice is part of what can make a photographer (and a photograph) something special.
It is even a bit more involved than this (I’m thinking of some things I’ve said/written about night photography at the moment) but I’ve written enough for now!
Dan
Very well said! I particularly like your paragraph about seeing and presenting one’s unique view.
Florian.
Hello,
in my opinion and literally, the first statement does not make sense at all. I guess it tries to say that photographers see things that other people may not see and thus render these things visible.
However, I much prefer your version – rendering the visible visible. It is also much less pretentious, which in my opinion is a good quality.
Have a nice weekend!
Florian.