Approaching photography
Author and photographer Paul Hill explains the 40-year journey to the latest edition of his seminal book, Approaching Photography
Abook exclusively about the ideas behind photographs, rather than the techniques, had not been published in Britain for photography students until Paul Hill wrote Approaching Photography in 1982. He has now updated it, and here he describes its genesis, and how the new third edition reflects the enormous changes in photography during the past 40 years whilst acknowledging how so much is still the same...
The book emerged from a meeting of photography lecturers convened in London around 1980 by Focal Press, then the largest publisher of photographic books in Europe. Focal Press had many publications on the applications and techniques of lens-based media, but nothing on ‘teaching photography as art’, they said. I had recently been leader of the Creative Photography course run at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham and Derbyshire College of Higher Education where we championed the artistic, rather than the commercial use of the medium – an approach that was different from most courses then. The Focal group decided that what was needed in the UK was a publication on how images could be examined and interpreted from diverse cultural and aesthetic points of view. To my great surprise, my colleagues at that meeting suggested that I should tackle this daunting task. As someone who thinks with his eyes, turning my photographic thoughts into 40,000 words was not going to be easy.
For the next three months I secreted myself away, and aided by copious cups of coffee and packets of chocolate digestive biscuits, produced a manuscript.
When I wrote the first edition 40 years ago, I stated on the first page: ‘Photography is not about focal lengths, film speeds and f-stops, it is about images: what you point your camera at, what you include within its viewfinder, what image you make into a print, and what context you place that photograph in.’
In that edition all of the photographs were black & white, so the main thing that I had to tackle in the 2021 edition was the digital and colour revolution that had taken place during those four subsequent decades.
Photography is now the most visible medium in the world with millions facing a camera lens and making ‘selfies’ every day and
changing many of our social interactions into camera- and screen-based ones.
But not that long ago we had a physical connection with a photograph, not a digital one. You made a print of the photograph in a darkroom – if you were lucky enough to have access to one – after chemically processing the film. This meant you would need to have specific skills to do these things. Or, you collected your prints from a lab, a high street outlet, or they were posted to you. In other words, you handled things at every stage of your involvement with the medium. In this century, you connect with a photograph through the screen of a camera and a computer. Before, there was a definite tactile element to photography that has now, for the most part, gone.
But even if that relationship has changed irrevocably, there is still so much that has remained the same; and those elements of seeing and thinking that are referred to in the 1982 edition of the book remain crucial to the underpinning ethos of the new edition.
Of course, the book is my personal perspective on the medium based on many decades of experience and practice in the media, the arts, and in education. I have tried to tackle a multitude of different practices, and offer practical advice – regardless of whether the reader uses a digital or a film camera. I want Approaching Photography to be for those who wish to tackle the medium seriously and beyond the ‘point-and-shoot’ stage, whether they are studying ‘A’ Levels, are on a university course, or in a camera club.
I have attempted to explain and illustrate what photographs are, why they were made and how they were used and, more particularly, what their place is in the creative arts and visual communications world of today. I am also interested in the historical context of photographic practices too because that reflects how the medium got to where it is today.
The book is about the range of approaches taken to the making of photographs in order to explain the intentions of the producers, as well as emphasising the importance of contextualisation to the understanding of the medium and those approaches.
Most people look at what is ‘in’ a photograph rather than seeing the photograph as a piece of unique visual material and/or a vehicle for ideas. In other words: photography of things, not about things.
It is essentially an empirical medium that is centred on what ‘comes out’. This can rarely be accurately predicted – and don’t we know it!
I have discovered as a photographer and teacher that to critically evaluate a photograph can be complicated and frequently inconclusive, and upsettingly, most photographers rarely undertake a deep subjective or serious examination of photographic imagery beyond a technical appraisal. In other words, how rather than why. Frequently camera owners rely on the comforting possession of easily valued sophisticated equipment for their reputation as photographers.
Most of us see scores of photographs each day, but do we bother to look at even one to try to find out what it ‘says’?
Like many photographers, I now use a smartphone for most of my work unless I undertake an assignment where things can move quickly, or at a distance. Many professionals believe photographs produced by a camera phone or a compact camera are not ‘serious’. ‘Photography has become deskilled,’ retort the seasoned professionals. ‘Everyone is a photographer now!’
Naturally, there is more than an element of self-interest in those remarks, with all those years of accumulating skills and experience seeming to count for nothing as your business and professional status declines. Musicians endured a monumental sea-change in their profession early this century with the decline of record sales when music tracks could be downloaded. But because they were trained musicians they could still perform and earn a living. If everyone is a photographer and modern cameras are ‘idiot-proof’ then the professional model almost certainly disintegrates. So why are so many students studying the medium today if the professional career prospects seem so grim? In answer, I could say: why do so many students study English Literature or Fine Art – when probably less than 10% will ever make a full-time living as authors or artists?
In the book, I ask why the medium’s multifarious facets are so neatly and thoughtlessly categorised by subject matter. What is more relevant than handy genre compartments should be the approach taken to the subject matter, both visually and intellectually; hence the title of the book. As a photographer you have to point your camera at things that actually exist. You, therefore, have a marvellous opportunity to interpret the world for yourself rather than represent the ideas and prejudices of other people.
The first part concentrates on the basic aspects of photographic image making and practice: how to express yourself and communicate through photography, and how and where photography is used today. Later chapters deal mostly with the different attitudes found in contemporary photography concerning the photographer as an observer of events and people, celebrant of nature and manmade objects, psychological chronicler, fine artist, conceptualist, experimenter and polemicist.
Each chapter is relatively selfcontained. I have tried to give them enticing titles like Seeing and Thinking Photographically; After the Shutter is Pressed; How Photography is Used; The Photographer as Witness; Experiencing Beauty; In Search of Self and Metaphor.
The book can be opened at almost any page, you can dip in without feeling that they have to start from the beginning to ‘get the point’.
It is peppered with text boxes and relevant and eye-catching ‘hanging’ quotes extracted from the main text, like: ‘It is impossible to prove anything conclusively in photography, other than a photograph is an image made as the result of light reacting with lightsensitive material.’
Most of the captions aim to be self-contained as well, and they deal with the context of the image and the intentionality of the maker rather than referring to subject, place and time.
As with the first edition, I wanted this edition to be a companion on a journey of discovery rather than a dry academic text book or manual, and to reinforce my belief that photography is the most important form of communication in the 21st century.
Readers can order the book from routledge. com, with a 20% discount applied using code FLR40 at the checkout.
‘You can dip in to any page without feeling you need to start from the beginning to get the point’