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Charles Harbritt

from a lecture given in 1970 - Albrun 9 Oct 1970 p 16.

A photograph is a two-dimensional visual delineation of reality made with a camera. ...the important thing here, and one that is frequently overlooked, is that photography is the only visual medium that has an inherent relationship with reality. The only other mediums that have inherent relationships with reality are the sound tape and, of course, film which essentially is a marriage of camera and tape recorder.

"The highest use of the film media is documentary" -S. Sonotage ...the trapping of an anto-visual[sic.] moment in time.

One of the realizations that photography brought about in painters was that there is no inherent relationship between a painting and reality... and everyone knows there is little relationship between the word and reality; not only in novels and poems, but

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unfortunately even in journalism where there is a pretense that here is such a relationship. ...Painting is putting paint on a surface. Sculpture is making a shape out of a materials. Writing is putting words on paper. Photography is making image delineations of reality.

To put it all another way: to make a photograph, there has to be something other than the photographer and his medium - film, light, camera. There has to be something in reality. For a painter there just has to be the paints and his medium - paint and surface. For a writer, pen and paper.

This brings us to a fundamental distinction. Photography ... is not ... art. It is something totally new in human experience: something humans have not been able to do until the last century or so. Like flying.

...The basic impulse of the photographer is diametrically opposed to the basic impulse of the artist no matter what the artist's medium.