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Stephen Garan’anga Visual Art
Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as artist. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism, which provides visual support for stories, mainly in the print media, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to sell products or services.
Today in Africa fine art photography is a crying foul because of its segregation by majority of the continent’s artists whilst it has all the mighty power of expressiveness like any of the preferred art forms.
The number of fine art photography practitioners is very insignificant beyond compare to the continent’s artistic population.
Internationally recognised photography awards, exhibitions and workshops have been staged on the continent but have not made a dent to the crisis.
How does such a powerful expressive tool like photography be not well embraced by the continent’s innumerous artists renowned for their creativity and innovativeness?
Evidence has it that there are a sizable number of tertiary educational institutions that have photography in their programs.
But majority of the continent’s art practitioners are not highly educated, most of them are either informally trained or self taught.
Fine art photography requires schooling which is attained from minutely available private spaces that are very expensive and beyond reach for many.
Photography involves very delicate high technological equipment that is often imported or dearly available, scarce developing chemicals that are uneasy to obtain, proper full house studio equipment and secure studio spaces with adequate privacy.
Currently there is now a trend toward a careful staging and lighting of the picture, rather than hoping to “discover” it ready made.
Additionally, new technological trends in digital photography have opened a new direction in full spectrum photography, where careful filtering choices across the ultraviolet, visible and infrared lead to new artistic visions.
As printing technologies have improved, a photographer’s art prints reproduced in a finely-printed limited-edition book have now become an area of strong interest to collectors in the world outside Africa.
This is because books usually have high production values, a short print run, and their limited market means they are almost never reprinted.
The collector’s market in photography books by individual photographers is developing rapidly.
There is now a thriving collectors’ market for which the most sought-after art photographers will produce high quality archival prints in strictly limited editions.
Attempts by online art retailers to sell fine photography to the general public alongside prints of paintings have had mixed results, with strong sales coming only from the traditional “big names” of photography.
Unlike other widely preferred art forms, photography is a high maintenance medium with delicacy that many would want to avoid.
Oftenest most artists are unable to meet all the requirements to utilise the medium. A greater percentage of the continent’s artists leave outside big cities where there are hardly any facilities.
Mostly the latest technology is not readily available and will take ages to grace them.
For the fortunate few who are able to tackle the necessary conditions all the way to exhibiting spaces are confronted by the rare purchases of the media.
If one is lucky to sell, the medium fetches very low prices that are inadequate to recover a significant percentage of the costs.
This is very discouraging to artists who frequently go for a while without making any sale whilst they need to earn a living from their profession.
With such favoured media like painting, sculpture or mixed media the convenience is much better and pieces fetch higher prizes at a time availing adequate funds to recover costs and extras.
Very often art collectors, dealers, gallerists etc. travel unimaginable long journeys coming down to Africa’s various countries to purchase masks, sculptures or paintings even when there are hundreds of miles away across inhospitable terrain.
They rarely or never inquire about photographic art pieces.
With the abundance of digital cameras everybody seems to be taking images daily and do not find any enthusiasm in buying certain images. For many artists fine art photography sounds very foreign, after all many prefer highly physical work that they fully enjoy the feel of their input on media they can be reckless with, be comfortable and reuse severally.
In Zimbabwe the National Gallery has annually hosting “Gwanza”, a month of international fine art photography exhibition founded and curated by one of the country’s internationally highly decorated photographer Calvin Dondo.
Free photography workshops have been conducted during the month and other photographic exhibitions such as the “World Press Photo” used to follow up. Unfortunately in our part of the world there are no art grants what so ever from our governments’ arts and cultural sectors that can be utilised by artists to explore the media, be comfortable and embrace it.
Without financial support fine art photography will remain fighting a losing battle and become an extinct art form.
Online Reporter