Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Life in Photography

When photography first appeared , its meaning as an art medium was restricted to being an imitation of painting . It did not require so much hard work and it provided a clarity often only sought by painters , and was naturally associated with painting . Ironically , photography was invented at the time of a crisis in painting , a search for authenticity through imprecise methods which characterized so much of impressionism and the styles which followed it . Ironically , though photography had the greatest potential for clarity , its aims were at first to create an artistic reality

, an interpreted and symbolic reality , rather than just capturing form . And for a long time , photography could not be free from the shadow of painting , its laws of light and composition - instead of borrowing those same rules directly from life itself

It took some time for photographers to understand the simple : that photography did not have to be painting . It did not have to imitate , it had to find its own way of depicting reality . By the ending years of the nineteenth century , there would be a movement for naturalistic photography - for making photography show a world as unfettered by special effects as possible . To capture the textures and forms , to work with the light itself and capture that , too - that was the uniqueness of photography as a medium for art . By the beginning of the twentieth century , photography had stepped fully into its Modern phase , which was characterized by a precision only photography could achieve , sharp definitions , studies of objects taken out of context or , on the contrary , shown within their natural - if unexpected to the viewer - surroundings . The world is beautiful ' - that is the slogan used by the photography of the time . And also unexpected - and photography was a way of uncovering this to the general eye

This incited a natural turn to subjects that were as of yet left untouched . Photography gave a stimulus to turn to subcultures for the sake of new and interesting ideas . It allowed to capture aspects of social life no one had ever thought of exposing , or doing so without using words , only with the seemingly unbiased , non-symbolic language of pictures . Essentially , it was like showing something which was indisputably true - if subject to interpretation . This allowed an interest in depicting social issues , for never could they have been brought to attention with such clarity before . And , of course photography was a natural medium for the cities , their sharp forms adequate to the medium which could show them off to the public , making them see something where before there was only a familiar background . In short , Modern photography made news out of of olds - it showed the close-by in ways so it would be seen as new . And there were few photographers who succeeded at this aim like Eugene Atget and Walker Evans

Eugene Atget (1857-1927 ) was initially a painter and an actor , flesh from the flesh of the French artistic circle . However , finding little success in either of...