Do the harsh reality of photographs and the interpretative nature of fine art, especially painting, have connection? Photography, which developed only in 1830s, has struggled for a definitive description as an art form, something that is naturally bestowed upon painting.
Photography’s quest for artistic respectability and the deep underlining connections of European painting and art with photography is being explored in an exhibition at London’s National Gallery.
In an innovative approach, early and contemporary photographs are presented next to paintings, highlighting the influence of art on photography.
Photography, the exhibition highlights, is staged and not just taken. “The confusion and deliberate ambiguity between the real and the fictional very much permeates this exhibition,” says Hope Kingsley, who has co-curated the exhibition along with Christopher Riopelle. “In these photographs, a lot is left to imagination, which fills in a very rich panoply of possibilities.”
Photography since its inception has been influenced by fine art, says Kingsley. Swedish painter-turned-photographer Oscar Gustav Rejlander, one of the pioneers of photography, used theatre artists to pose for his controversial semi-nude pictures mimicking paintings of European masters. He was one of the standout photographers to emerge from the 1857 Manchester exhibition.
“For Rejlander using subjects inspired by art, subjects that were very familiar to his audience, were a way of pushing people’s understanding on what photography could do,” explains Kingsley.
The nude and the suffering debate in photography is also tackled in the exhibition with comparisons being drawn between a nude portrait of a man with an octopus tattoo and an albumen print from 1850s of a sculpture of a Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons in a death struggle with sea serpents.
“The controversy about the photographs of nudes was the mismatch between the beauty of nudes in paintings, which were idealised and synthesised from a number of sources, to the undeniable reality of a naked body in front of the lens of a camera,” says Kingsley. The early debate on whether nude photography could be art centred on the fact that these photographs were so real, so un-idealised. The exhibition does not invoke debates about censorship, especially on nude photography, but instead the debate on what is art, whether photography can be qualified as art and what is legitimate in name of art, Kingsley adds.
Indian-born British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron’s 1872 photograph of a woman and child as the Madonna and Jesus was inspired by Renaissance paintings and Helen Chadwick subverted that image by making a collage of Madonna and a girl child with photocopies.
French artist Ignace-Henri-Theordore Fantin-Latour’s The Rosy Wealth of June, a still like of a flower bouquet, has inspired Ori Gersht’s photograph of exploding recreation of Latour flower arrangements, highlighting transience of beauty in the world, a nod at memento mori. The photographs and paintings are presented in traditional genres of portraits, still life, nudes, tableaux and landscape, highlighting the universality of the themes and influences across paintings and photography.

Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present National Gallery, London. Till January 20, 2013.