Photo Critique: Fotoweek DC

Critique

Exhibition – Simply Beautiful: Photographs from National Geographic

“Selected from National Geographic’s archive, these photographs are based off the new National Geographic book, Simply Beautiful Photographs and make us ponder what creates beauty in a photograph.  Often one of these elements, such as light or palette, will stand out, adding a distinctive note.  How photographers compose and image can open our eyes to a multitude of beauties, things we could not have seen before the advent of a frozen moment in time.  Photographs give us visual proof that the world is grander than we imagined, that there is beauty, often overlooked, in nearly everything.”

That was the description of the exhibit on the Fotoweek DC website.  And as the description described, the photographs that I saw at the exhibit were: simply beautiful.  All the photos in the exhibit showed a sense of beauty.  In every photograph, whether it be artificial or natural, there was a simplicity to it.  Each picture was very simple in every way, and yet was able to fully show its potential in delivering a beautiful photograph.  Just like the title, they were “simply beautiful” in all its meanings.

The natural pictures (meaning the pictures of nature and living beings) were one “type” of picture.  They involved various colors and textures, and everything was “in sync.”  Even if a human being was in a picture of a forest, he looked completely natural in that environment.  Some nature photos were absolutely stunning.  A picture of a mountain and its reflection seemed as if there were two worlds due to such clarity in the reflection.  The framing of the picture had the reflection dominating more of the photograph, and it in fact made me wonder if the world was turned upside down, meaning the reflection’s clarity made me doubt that the world above the water was really real.

Another nature picture was of a little boy bending down from a rock to drink water from a river.  This photo particularly caught my attention for its serenity despite all the elements in the picture.  There were leafs everywhere (since it was in an untamed forest) and plants and nature dominated the picture.  Yet the boy seemed completely natural in that environment, and the green of the forest subdued the boy’s bright orange skin.  Although nature dominated the picture, the boy was in the center, giving him full attention while complementing it with the life of nature.  All the colors, textures, elements were in sync with each other to present a beautiful, yet strangely natural picture.

There was also another nature photograph of light coming through fog of a forest’s aerial view.  It may not have been aerial, but you were able to see from the top of the trees in the forest.  Either way, this picture was beautiful because of how it simply looked.  The light that escaped through the fog illuminated the tops of the trees, and casted shadows onto the fog of that tree’s color.  Meaning, the red tree casted a red shadow onto the fog because of the bright, early-morning sunlight.  Honestly, it seemed almost unreal because it looked like a painting of nature.  From a glance, it was as if God had taken the colors of the trees with his hand, and smeared it all in one direction onto the fog.  The appreciation of beauty that comes from how unnatural nature can be can be seen clearly in the photograph.

Then there was the artificial photographs.  These involved man-made buildings and architecture, but they did not lose in terms of beauty when it was compared to its natural counterparts.  One picture had a night scene of New York City engulfed in fog.  The scene was “painted” light purple, and although the fog was taking over the city, the skyscrapers stood tall and eerily lit up the world with its lights.  It gave off a strange and wonderful fantastical feeling.  It showed fantasy mixed in with mystery, and your mind wanders into its streets wondering what would happen in this situation when you stare at this picture.

Another artificial photograph was of a underground canal with holes in the roof.  Through these holes, light from the outside came beaming through, illuminating the canal.  I really liked this picture because of one thing: it gave form to something that we normally cannot see.  Here in this picture, we can see light take form.  We can look at this picture and point out “that is light.”  In normal life, we can just point randomly and say that “there is light here,” but we can never in this way see it take a certain form.  In the picture, we can see it actually take form as a beam that enters the canal, and lights up the world around it.  And yet the contrast of darkness of the underground and brightness of the light makes the beam of light completely noticeable.

There were other photos that incorporated both natural and artificial elements.  One photo had a monkey running across the field of grass in front of a Mayan pyramid.  The ruins in the photo have completely become a part of nature, despite being artificially made.  The nature elements of the photo — the monkey, the trees, the vines — all dance around the ruins without even a bit of uncertainty.  Nature is acting natural, and it shows us accepting an artificial building as part of its own.  It’s a scene of two completely opposites coming to terms with each other to create one coherent picture.

Another that incorporated both was a picture of the milky way over the maoi Easter Island head sculptures.  All the stars in the universe seems to have gathered to take this one picture, and the night sky is a spectacle that cannot be easily replicated.  The milky way features different colors and the stars are of different sizes, adding variation that rids boredom.  However, the maoi are simply looking out in a different direction, as if to not care.  The light cast on the sculptures puts emphasis on the white parts that represent their eyes, and these eye are looking out in a different direction, as if telling the audience that this scenery is nothing new to them.  Here, in this photo, the natural and artificial become one, with each being used to one another’s existence.  The angle and framing of the photo also makes it look as if the sky and ground has merged together, bringing more togetherness to the heads and the starry night.  Ironically, removing these statues would seem to make the photo even more unnatural.

The photography in the exhibition showcased beauty when, at least to me, when it is most beautiful.  It uses simplicity to emphasize how beauty can be found in basically anything that we see if we choose to see it.  Each photo is a still picture, and yet it seems that the objects in the picture could at any moment start moving as if there was no one watching.  Yet at the same time, nature seems to be posing for the camera.  Water seems to stop its movement to allow the perfect reflection photo to take place.  It’s as if nature is telling us to realize that there is something beautiful, so go look for it, because we will easily find it even in the simplest things.  This gallery shows us how far we can go with photography, and how much beauty we can capture within a single frame.  The photos in this gallery emphasize how anything can not only be beautiful, but also anything can be simply beautiful.