kitchen life # 76 / painting vs photography # 5 / noir # 9-10 ~ le moyen de la photographie et de son apparel

dish strainer with stuff ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
painting vs photography ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
noir book spread ~ • click to embiggen

Apropos of nothing significant, as I was contemplating the painting vs photography idea while pursuing an issue of PleinAir Magazine, a thought occurred to me .....

The definition of en plein air or plein air painting is the the French equivalent of "open air" and is commonly used to describe the act of painting outdoors. The French also use the phrase peinture sur le motif which, roughly translated means "painting of the object(s) or what the eye actually sees". The common objective of Plein Air painters is to reproduce the actual visual conditions as encountered in situ and at the time of the act of painting.

That got me to thinking ... when I leave the house and go out into the "open air" to make pictures of referents and their actual visual condition at the time of my picture making, am I not a Plein Air picture maker? And furthermore, why do painters have all the fun with fancy French phrases?

Why, when I make a picture of decaying food, am I making a still life picture and not a vivent encore photographie picture? Or, as in the case of the kitchen life picture in this entry is it not a la vie dans ma cuisine photographie picture? Just think of all the prestige, adoration and high-minded kudos that would be heaped upon me at an exhibition opening soiree as I sling about a veritable plethora of hoity-toity French phrases.

iMo, it's time to rise up and demand that more fancy highfalutin' French phraseology be developed and applied to the medium of photography and its apparatus, aka: le moyen de la photographie et de son apparel.