Can you take a photograph without a subject?
That’s the challenge I set the participants in the first session of my latest Through The Lens photo-class.
Some of the participants looked at me as though I’ve gone off my head. Is he crazy or what? Others sat in silence. There were those who protested that it is impossible to take a photograph with no subject. Later in the week, after having thought about it, one participant wrote to me …
Because we live in a physical world and because our brains are programmed to seek out meaning, I do not think it is possible to take a photo without a subject.
Even if we take a photo of the blue sky, the blueness of the sky is still a subject that we can see and discuss and compare.
Even a photo taken with the lens cap on has a subject … darkness … which is a very interesting subject because darkness can be compared with light.
Anything we frame in our viewfinder is a subject.
Is that right?
Here’s an image that one of the participants produced as a result of my challenge.
© Jose Bucheli
Does it have a subject?
Some would say the colours … or the shapes … or the play of the light, which seems to be coming from one side … is the subject.
Maybe. But let’s be frank about this – a debate about whether it is possible to take a photograph without a subject is pointless. It’s one of those arguments that can go on and on forever, going round and round and getting nowhere.
So why did I set the exercise?
I did it to encourage the course participants to focus on the importance of subject in a photograph. I hoped that by approaching it from the other direction – deliberately trying to avoid a subject (which is not easy) – they will be encouraged to think about the content of future photographs.
In another form of image creation – painting – the artist starts out with a blank canvas and builds up from nothing. This slow and painstaking process encourages the creator to think carefully about what he or she is painting … its importance … its placement in the image … how well-defined it is … and so on.
By contrast, a photograph can be created in 1/100th of a second with a simple push of a button. It’s too easy. This encourages carelessness and, as a result, it is easy to overlook the importance of the subject. The human eye is very good at picking out a subject from its background. Cameras are not good at this and subjects can get lost. They can be in the wrong position or badly lit.
A second objective of the exercise was to encourage the skill of ‘seeing’. The ability to ‘see’ rather than just ‘look’ is an essential skill in photography. I hope that, in taking on this challenge, my course participants have been ‘seeing’ new things all around them.
Jose Bucheli certainly has captured some unexpected beauty in her ‘subject-less’ photograph.
Good article, Alistair, and an interesting exercise for photographers. Zen-like in its own way: To grasp the concept one must first let it go.
Thanks John. Zen and the art of photography!
Hi Alistair,
Quite an interesting assignment.
While I was reading, I couldn’t help thinking about a blog I visit often @ http://fodder4thinking.wordpress.com/.
Its author RoughWaterJohn the Pirate composes the most extraordinary prose and then find the most extraordinary images to accompany them.
I’m sure he’d have lots to says on your assignment choice.
It also made me think about a writing assignment I’d once been given: to write what I’d like to see written on my grave stone.
Here’s what made it interesting to me: What does one write about when one’s decided there will be no head stone after death?
Interesting fodder which, in my case, produced a poem.