Past Masters and expressive photography

Francesco Carovillano

Through nature and image-making I keep discovering who I am. The more I grow older, the more these two things merge together.

I’m a full-time landscape photographer mainly working in the forest of Fontainebleau, France.

francescocarovillano.com

In the first part, I wrote about the historic context surrounding the Impressionist painters, their struggle towards recognition, their belief regarding personal interpretation and how their understanding of art reflected on their final works.

In this second part, I'm going to explore their thoughts on perfection and on influences. To see how their mature thinking can be applied to our approach towards expressive photography.

On Perfection

It is absurd to look for perfection.~Camille Pissarro

With this statement, written in 1883, Pissarro was advocating a radically modern step in the common understanding of art. Sensations matter more than perfection: the former come naturally, the latter does not. Therefore, as an artist, one does not have to look for sensations, one can not seek for sensations, one can only find them. In this sense, Pissarro anticipates Pablo Picasso, who never sought, but found. Another formulation of this same problem for Pissarro was to find character.