With the advent of the camera, people began to prefer photographers to take portraits because it was faster and cheaper. It influenced the visual arts in the context of material interests and gave rise to new directions. The photographic process of that time was far from perfect: exposure could last for about half an hour; otherwise, there was a risk of getting a blurry image. A famous American photographer, Steve McCurry, states that things with imperfection have its own certain beauty (Girardet, 2021). This principle has some similarities to one of the main goals of art: depicting beautifulness.
The invention of the camera was a revolutionary moment in the history of art. It not only gave birth to a new kind of visual art such as photography but also influenced existing types. Therefore, instead of competing with photography in the believability of the image, the artists turned their attention to what was inaccessible to photography – light, color, and movement. This was one of the prerequisites for the emergence of Impressionism – a trend that focused on capturing the moment, state, mood.
Edgar Degas, for example, applied new knowledge and experience gained by discovering new details in photographs. Therefore, in his sketches of hounds, you can see that he began to depict the process of lifting the hooves off the ground in sequential order, as he noticed in photographs. Previously, most artists believed that a horse lifts all of its hooves off the ground when running. Moreover, according to Bull (2020), not only posture, light, and object of the photograph itself and the cultural implications are important, but also emotional aspects. This formulates a certain similarity with the influence that photography had on art, especially Impressionism: artists began to give preference to realism.
References
Bull, S. (2020). A companion to photography. John Wiley & Sons.
Girardet, E. (2021). Focus: Steve McCurry – merging art with photojournalism. Web.