Boredom, paintings, art

Hah, plenty of people seem to be bored of conteporary photography out here. Not very surprised. People have always been bored of contemporary photography at least since the beginning of last century. I'm bored as well. Maybe it's time to bring in that old clash that photography shouldn't try to imitate paintings. Too much painterly stuff out there, when the interesting thing are all those images that you collect with a camera through a viewfinder and you wouldn't conceive on your own or through your eyes.

This reminds me. When I look at this Bruegel painting I can't help but to think...





... that the framing is sort of not perfect. There are chopped trees at both sides and even the people are in a slightly non-optimal position and they are slightly cropped also at the bottom. There are multitude of small scenes and actions going on, just like in daily life. I just guess that the framing and choice of the scene is for enhanced realism.

If we now compare with a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson depicting a similar snowy and populated scene...





... well, somehow the composition tries to imitate paintings and it's more clean than Bruegel's. Just because it being a photograph brings the realism that the painter tried to achieve? So painters imitated life, and photographers imitated painters? Aren't we missing something here?