Concept art photography
Conceptual photography | Tate
Art Term
Conceptual photography is photography that illustrates an idea
Since the invention of the photographic camera, artists have explored it as a means to stage a false reality, or capture an idea. This can be seen in one of the first staged photographs, Hippolyte Bayard’s Self Portrait of a Drowned Man, 1840.
However, the term ‘conceptual photography’ began to be used in the 1960s, coinciding with the early explorations into video art and Conceptual Art. The phrase can refer to any use of photography within the Conceptual Art movement.
The development of conceptual photography
Using cameras, artists like Richard Long and Dennis Oppenheim began recording their performances and temporary artworks in a manner that is now often described as deadpan. The aim was to make simple, realistic images of the artwork that looked as documentary as possible.
Artists adopted this approach as far back as the early twentieth century when Alfred Stieglitz photographed Marcel Duchamp’s readymade made from a urinal, Fountain, for an exhibition in New York. The original Fountain was lost, but the photographs by Stieglitz remain and have become works of art in themselves.
Others explored conceptual photography as a means to stage an idea. This is often seen in advertising, where images are used to convey a clear concept, often using actors or props.
Conceptual photography has since expanded to include artists such as Cindy Sherman, John Hilliard and Broomberg and Chanarin. For them the medium is much more experimental, taking elements of documentation or staging but re-interpreting them in new ways.
The range of photography included under this title has diversified hugely with the availability of photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop.
This allows anyone with a computer to create an image which is other than a direct representation of what was in front of the lens.
Likewise, platforms such as Instagram and Flikr have allowed any smartphone user to share their photography and create entire portfolios of work. Amalia Ulman is an example of one of these photographers; using Instagram to create an entire narrative around a fictional identity.
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Tate Etc.
’s Mariko Finch spoke to a selection of artists whose work features in the Tate Modern exhibition Conflict, Time, …
selected artists in the collection
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born 1954
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1921–1986
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born 1949
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1938–2011
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born 1964
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born 1945
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born 1970
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1930–2008
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born 1937
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born 1958
selected artworks in the collection
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conceptual photography at tate
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10 Nov 2016 – 21 May 2017
Elton John’s unrivalled modernist photography collection comes to Tate Modern
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12 Apr – 29 Aug 2016
See the works that changed the way we think about art today
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9 May – 6 Jul 2003
Press release announcing Thomas Ruff 1979 to the present past exhibition at Tate Liverpool 2003
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26 Nov 2014 – 15 Mar 2015
An exhibition exploring the relationship between photography and sites of conflict over time at Tate Modern, opens November 2014
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21 Oct 2016 – 5 Mar 2017
Discover one of the most influential figures of the post-war era
10 Conceptual Photographers Who Compose Visions of Surreal Darkness – Scene360
The exploration of ideas and human experience is at the heart of conceptual photography.
Despite its lengthy history—arising from the mind-centered works of artists such as Marcel Duchamp—conceptual art and photography have never been defined as official movements, but rather as creative methodologies.
However, many young artists today are using photography in combination with Photoshop and other photo-editing tools to visually express, with surreal and symbolic imagery, the nuances of the human spirit and psyche. Quite often, as is the nature of life, these scenes become dark. The result is a growing body of photographers who powerfully channel their own personal narratives into fearless and poetic explorations of sorrow, alienation, and death.
Top: Mikael Aldo’s “The Beginning of Ashes” explores the inevitable and fatal effects of deforestation on all living things.
“Graveyard Girls” was a haunting collaboration between Kyle Thompson and Marissa Bolen.
Kyle Thompson
Kyle Thompson is a Portland-based photographer who takes beautifully eerie portraits and self-portraits set in deep woods and abandoned buildings.
He has an incredible ability to obscure meaning to reveal the ephemeral, emotional present. Featured here is “Graveyard Girls,” wherein three dreary, clay-colored women personify the quiet, life-draining experience of despair.
The work of Mark Harless frequently depicts the human body interacting with nature in symbolic and emotional ways.
Mark Harless
In this haunting image by Mark Harless (aka, Bleeblu), two figures lie side-by-side in a shallow pool. With their pale backs left to the empty air and shoulders lightly touching, they suggest a relationship between intimacy and death. Harless often explores the vulnerability of the nude figure in nature, and he has an astounding ability to explore both darkness and transformative beauty.
The visual poetry of Amy Haselhurst: a dark figure emerges from the steam in Hverir, Iceland.
Amy Haselhurst
No one quite shows symbolic moments of both power and sensitivity like Amy Haselhurst. When it comes to conceptual photography, she focuses on composing images that explore the interior landscapes of the human mind.
This one—depicting a shadowy figure emerging from the steam—invokes a cathartic, double-sense of apocalyptic dread and the euphoria of survival. The fact that we can’t see her face makes her surreal presence evermore interpretable.
Gravity ceases to exist in Jackson McGoldrick’s dream-like portraiture.
Jackson McGoldrick
Jackson McGoldrick mixes darkly surreal elements into his spellbinding portraiture. Nature has a solemn and supernatural presence in his works; bodies engage in deep rituals under stormy or tree-filled skies. This self-portrait depicts McGoldrick suspended in the air, as if torn between two worlds.
Hieronimus captures sorrow and isolation in this rainy, blue-toned photo of a woman at the edge of a river.
Chris Hieronimus
Chris Hieronimus’ washed-out conceptual scenes convey the states of melancholia and contemplation. Embodying sadness, courage, and self-awareness, his ethereal subjects wander down empty roads, through fog-choked fields, or curl beneath the roots of an old tree.
Hieronimus’ artistic mantra is “the change is me,” referring to the power of human passion and creativity to enact positive transformation.
Kavan Cardoza uses conceptual photography to communicate inner worlds of darkness and mystery.
Kavan The Kid
The work of Kavan Cardoza (aka, Kavan the Kid) leads us into the darker side of human experience. His images are passionate, beautiful, and often bloody, using vivid colors and cryptic imagery to evoke visceral feelings in the viewer. This image, titled “Darkest Secrets,” inspires a simultaneous fear of and attraction towards the unknown.
Intimacy, beauty, and death breathlessly collide in the story-filled images of Laura Makabresku.
Laura Makabresku
Myth and fairy tale play an important role in the work of Polish photographer Laura Makabresku. From the River of Styx to the murky forests of the brothers Grimm, she creates worlds full of emotional allegories—beauty, youth, death, and dreams arrive through otherworldly visions of sacrifice and spiritual communion with animals.
Mikael Aldo takes an eerie dip in a fish pond with a grisly skull.
Mikael Aldo
From personal journeys to global issues of deforestation, conceptual photography provides the ideal medium for Mikael Aldo to weave deeply emotional stories. The above image, titled “Imminently Living,” features Aldo himself, submerged under the water and holding a skull over his face. His underwater body coupled with the grim visage seems to express the vulnerability of life and the ever-looming presence of death.
A recurring dream inspired Isak to create this image of a staircase descending into darkness.
Gabriel Isak
To view the work of Gabriel Isak is to walk through the realms of the unconscious. His images are characterized by solitary figures set against dark and vast landscapes. Emanating with both serenity and desolation, the faceless subjects become embodiments of the viewer’s own emotional wanderings. The long staircase, for example, signifies a drop-off into the unknown, but the viewer manifests what lies at the bottom—terror, transition, or both.
“In the Wake of Thunder”: Stoddard’s melancholic subject, swarming with insects, invokes the emotional gravity of a storm.
Alex Stoddard
Alex Stoddard’s growing collection of unique and narrative-rich images will seize your imagination. He knows how to seamlessly blend reality into dark fantasy; among his gallery, pale sea-witches haunt rocky shores, nude figures peer from shadowy forests, and a young man (modeled by Stoddard himself) drinks from a fountain of blood. If you’re interested in learning more about conceptual photography, Stoddard’s world is a great place to explore.
Photos © respective artists.
What is concept photography?
Before you is the first example, a photograph of Jeff Wall, which everyone knows, including because Hokusai is here, plus the usual Bressonian “decisive moment” and a story-photo story unfolding before our eyes. It should be noted that this is probably Wall's most understandable conceptual photograph.
Here the author seems to be flirting with you, showing you a conceptual photograph, the language of which is clear to you, because it is the language of modernist photography familiar to us. Its conceptuality is manifested in a dialogue with the history of art - Japanese engraving combined with a modernist photographic language. The author of this simple work, as it were, invites you on his conceptual journey, in which it will become more and more difficult to understand the rest of his work.
Conceptual photography is photography that explores itself: how photography functions, how it interacts with the viewer. Often conceptual photography works in dialogue with the history of art and in dialogue with the history of photography. The subject of art here is reflection, the desire of photography to understand itself, that is, in photography as art or photography as media, in how a person perceives it, how he looks at it and what he sees, how he interacts with it. It happens that conceptual photography steps into interdisciplinary zones with one foot, exploring issues close to contemporary art: everyday life, man and society, environmental change, migration, globalization, media, society, working in dialogue with modern philosophy, religion, science, psychology, sociology, politics.
Although this is not a photograph in its purest form, but a photographic documentation of the conceptual works of Josef Kozhut "Three Chairs". Joseph explores the nature of art by asking us to figure out what we mean when we say the word "chair" and which is more "chair" of the three presented: a real chair, a dictionary definition of a chair, and a photograph of a chair. The artist invites you to think about what you see in front of you, and how the work of art works, being read by the viewer.
Conceptual photography is a "subsection" of conceptual art. A subsection that works with photography as a media, that is, where the artist's thought is expressed through photography. The role of photography here is a document, media, information carrier. It should be noted that modern conceptual artists mainly work with conceptual photography. Today they work with photography, tomorrow they can work with other modern media - painting, preference, sculpture, their own body, and so on.
It is sometimes difficult to call them photographers, as it happens that they do not even take their own photos, and often the photos look, to put it mildly, unprofessional. You may ask - what is the art here? And art is in the mind.
By genre, it can be any photo - from landscape to portrait. Any photo can be conceptual. Conceptual projects are often made in a mixed genre, that is, when photographs of different genres are found inside the project.
Conceptual photography is not concerned with reproducing the beauty of the surrounding world. Thus speaking in opposition to artistic photography and fine arts (Fine Art). Conceptual photography refers to the intellectual comprehension of what is seen. In other words, it doesn't work with the "beautiful" category. She is not an aesthetic object. She is not for the heart and emotion! She does not use or develop artistic visual languages. These topics are still dealt with by art photography. Conceptual photography is not artistic.
In good examples of conceptual photography, it often happens that the artist refuses the usual recognizable photographic means of expression - a decisive moment, a recognizable and emotionally evoking plot, emotions and gestures in portraits, and so on. That is why these photos may seem boring and uninteresting to you - you cannot find on them what you are used to reading in photographs and by what you identify a photo for yourself as good or bad. It is in such works that the artist explores how the viewer interacts with photography.
Photo © Jeff Wall Jeff Wall explores whether the viewer can consider a work of art if it does not depict absolutely anything that might interest him (the viewer). Can the viewer "see" a photograph without recognizable triggers: events, plot, emotions, decisive moments. In a word, without all those visual language formulas in photography that we are so used to and that we skillfully use. Will the viewer be able to view a photograph that does not appeal to him in terms of his viewing experience? In addition, Wall deals with the issue of trust in the documentary nature of the photographic image.
We are accustomed to trust the image and form an opinion about the reality depicted in the photograph. Wall shows us a random photograph, which we automatically read as a documentary and think that it all happened in reality. And he just took, as usual, a staged photo with actors, scenery, and cinematic lighting ... This is how he solves one of the key issues of conceptual photography in his own way - how the viewer reads and perceives a work of art.
Another conceptual photographer, Thomas Struth, focuses on how viewers interact with works. When you see this work in a museum, its large size, "angle of view" and a huge amount of detail create the illusion that it is you who came to the museum and stand in front of the Las Meninas, and these people stand in front of you in line and prevent you from watching. You become part of the play. The crowd in front of you seems to be standing in front of a framed mirror. A little girl from that room in the distance (and in fact - behind you), looks at her father and mother, who are painted by the artist.
They are standing somewhere behind the children who are watching the picture, and you are probably the person who stands in the white opening with his hand raised, as if you are also reflected in this mirror. This is how the audience and you become part of the new picture of Thomas Struth.
Modern artists sometimes use the language of artistic photography in their works, but their task is not just to convey the beauty of the world around them, although they look expensive, beautiful and technically difficult. This is called post-conceptualism. Postconceptualism is a conceptual project hidden in a beautiful package. The prominent representatives of post-conceptualism are modern artists Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson, who shoot their works in a complicated and expensive way and often use the language of artistic beautiful photography for their conceptual works.
So, let's list the main distinguishing features of conceptual photography:
- explores itself, that is, how photography itself functions: the nature of photography, its documentary nature, photographic truth
- explores how photography or art interacts with the viewer and perception stereotypes
- can be found in dialogue with the history of art and the history of photography
- refers to the intellectual understanding of what he saw
- uses a series-typology, instead of an outdated photo history
- does not reproduce the beauty of the surrounding world, because the art here is not to learn how to take beautiful pictures
As a conclusion, I should note that without knowledge of the context, that is, without being a prepared viewer, it can be difficult to decipher the ideas embedded by the author in a conceptual work.
To do this, you need to know the history of contemporary art, the main authors, the themes and contexts with which they work. Conclusion: we must try to be a prepared spectator.
It is important to note the difference between "idea", "thought" in relation to conceptual photography. As you understand, not every “idea” can be called a “thought”. For example, if the idea of photography is to show "old age", "childhood", "war". It might be a good idea for projects in a children's photography school, but they have nothing to do with concept photography. It is also the case with "creative photography", where there is an idea, but there is no "thought". These categories include advertising photography, which has nothing to do with conceptual photography. In order to become a conceptual photograph, it must address the main issues of conceptual art listed at the beginning of the chapter. All other (even very cool) ideas and thoughts do not make this photo conceptual.
Conceptual photography is not a photograph in which the author wants to convey some idea or plot, tell him some story.
Conceptual photography is not photography that uses creativity, imagination, artistry and creativity. This is not a photograph that conveys the vision of the author.
A conceptual photograph is not a photograph that evokes an emotional response from the viewer. This is not a photograph of ordinary objects in an unusual light, where, using an interesting compositional solution, the author tried to convey the deep meaning of the picture. This is not a photo that the author wanted to impress you with.
Photo © Unknown authorHere are photos-examples from Google for the query "conceptual photo", which are not. They do not raise and do not solve any issues important for photography, as well as issues of related modern scientific disciplines (sociology, ecology, philosophy, etc.). It can be called a creative photo, a photo with an idea. This also includes advertising photography. But all this has nothing to do with conceptual photography.
We continue the competition for the most interesting questions
according to contemporary photography.
You send us your questions -
we try to answer them or include them in the topics of our next articles. Today the question is asked by Mikhail from the city of Perm.
He asks:
“Why do you need to make art that has an idea that no one understands? In general, can such a conceptual photography be called art? Write your comments and new questions below.
model work, preparation and improvisation — Russian photo
Conceptual photography: work
models, preparation and improvisation
October 16, 2019
The word "conceptual" is associated with something abstruse and difficult to understand. For some, this direction is close, for some it is not, many simply do not really understand this direction of art. Vyacheslav Ivanov is a conceptual photographer. We really liked his original photo projects, and we decided to talk with him to find the key to understanding such an interesting direction as conceptualism.
Photo from the series: Raven
— Vyacheslav, first of all, please tell us about the photo that took third place in the AWARD Concept 5 nomination. How was it made?
— Oh! I cannot find a simple and understandable answer to this question. In fact, there is no particular story behind the creation of this photo that is worth sharing. Idea, good preparation, excellent model work and improvisation.
| Black Piero |
And I also try to stay away from viewing photos of other authors. I don’t watch various photo publics on social networks, especially the Instagram feed (smiles). "Sight" is good at the start, but at some point it starts to get in the way. It is better to turn off the phone and read a book or go to a museum. Photo from the series: Maat
- How do you understand the term "conceptual"?
- For myself, I put more philosophical meaning into this term. Where the inner form is more important than the outer form. Where thought is more important than technical (exposed light) and even artistic (extraordinarily interesting composition) implementation. It does not matter how beautiful, for example, the photograph itself or the film is interesting.
Photos from the series: Secret Did you take courses? Or mastered photography in practice?
— I studied photography a little when I was a schoolboy.
Then it was only film. I learned how to load film with my eyes closed, how to develop and print. Some basic composition. Maybe that's why I don't feel any trepidation for film photography (smiles). Although I still have the same camera, and it was Smena 8M, and I sometimes use it even now. As for the artistic side of the issue, no, I did not study anywhere.
- Tell us about the series that you are especially proud of. What is their main idea?
- A special series that I'm proud of (I wouldn't actually use that word in relation to myself), perhaps the thought of solitude. Reflections on the loneliness of a person in the world of things and a consumer society. About the relationship with the environment. About resistance to such "progress" of mankind.
Photo from the series: Pack of cards
— Many are skeptical about arthouse cinema, conceptual photography and other new trends in art.
