Fact: Photography is in danger. It’s in danger of being replaced by AI because so many people do not understand how it is an art. More people use photography as something to simply capture — instead of to create. As it is, photography has struggled to be recognized as a fine art in the same way that paintings, sculpture, and more have been. And a major part of this is due to people creating for algorithms instead of creating images for themselves with artistic expression. This is something that every photographer or anyone interested in photography should teach to their children. And we’re going to look at five photographers who do this.
All images in this article are used with permission from the photographers in our interview. Lead image by Claire Droppert.
Table of Contents
Brooke DiDonato
In our interview with her, Brooke DiDonato talked about how she connects emotions and feelings to her images. She’s a surreal photographer who finds creative ways to make photographs that are mostly done in-camera. Her images don’t conform to an algorithm, they come from internal feelings.
“So I started using my camera as a tool to shed light on these stories by creating a body of work that walks the boundary between fact and fiction. These images depict real narratives about vulnerability, instability and self-destruction fused with dream-like visual qualities.”
Brooke DiDonato
When we look at Brooke’s photographs, we can see that these aren’t necessarily things that would happen normally. Instead, they’re playful. Often, Brooke is making her own sets and pieces for the images. There is also a clever play on mirrors, exact placements, and lighting to get her feelings across. Her images are very original, and yet at the same time they feel like an evolution of Rodney Smith‘s sense of fun and whimsy.
Jaina Cipriano
Jaina Cipriano is a photographer who escaped a cult and channels traumas and playtime into her images. She refuses to use Photoshop, and so she’s often just being really creative. Originally, she believed in documenting. But then she started to set up elaborate parties for her to photograph. Eventually, it turned into full set building, specific lighting, and more just to express how she’s feeling.
“I am exploring the emotional toll of religious and romantic entrapment…My worlds communicate with our neglected inner child and are informed by explosive colors, elements of elevated play and the push/pull of light and dark.”
Jaina Cipriano
She gets a lot of fun out of it, too, according to our interview! In fact, creative problem-solving is fun for her; and it’s a skill that should be taught to youth culture today.
Katerina Vo
Photographer Katerina Vo is one that blends conceptual ideas and documentary photography together in a way that we don’t often see anymore. In her series, Fatherland, she tackles the emotions around masculinity, the American dream, and nationalism. She felt like even doing the series clarified a lot of things for her in life.
Fatherland is an umbilical tug-of-war, an untangling and re-tangling of fraught relationships with the father and with the nation, which not only parallel, but interweave, intertwine, and knot. It explores the dynamic in my own family as a microcosm of national conversations, histories, and struggles. The series is a glimpse behind the curtain of the mythologies and fantasies of the American Dream, which blur into the living of daily life in the U.S. to the point of being indistinguishable. In examining my relationship with my father and the nation into which I was born, I seek to interrogate the way in which this mythology, including pop culture and repeated national narratives, merge with daily life and how these ideas are transmitted through the family structure to create the national subject.
Katerina Vo
Several elements require strategic placement in the images, along with scenes we’re both so used to seeing and yet feel oddly distant. For example, we see comfortable couches in living rooms right alongside guns ready to be used. The feelings, again, are what’s taught here, and the entire series is fascinating.
Claire Droppert
Claire Droppert is a fascinating photographer who shoots all her own images and then does work in post-production to really bring her final creative vision to life. And when working with horses, that’s pretty difficult to do. But in Claire’s sreies “Emotions,” she wanted to really show how elegant horses can be.
“In this series, I intend to focus primarily on the character, elegance, power and nobleness of the horse. Working with tones, colours and contrasts, I wanted to create a feeling that will appeal to your emotions.”
Claire Droppert
The emotions here are those of being in awe of something and so incredibly enamored with it. I think we can clearly say that without a doubt, Claire nailed it.
Sydni Indman
Syndi Indman is a surrealist photographer we found on Flickr, and who channels various emotions into her images. She uses colors to tell these stories and they often have very ethereal and surreal feelings to them.
“I gravitate toward lighting from below as it’s unnatural and thus unsettling, yet strangely beautiful…Also, directional and dramatic light (particularly directly overhead) like in Renaissance art creates impact, forcing the eye through shadows and onto the subject.”
Sydni Indman
She’s so fascinating because she uses colors and lighting to convey the intensity of emotions. For example, she wonders how to visualize the horror of a panic attack or the passion when hearing a song that hits really deep; which she talks about a bit in our interview.