On Claude Monet and Photography

I often spend my free time taking pictures on 35mm film. Recently, I applied to a position where I’d do a lot of photography, and one of the application questions was “Tell us about an artist or icon that compels you to create.” Here’s what I wrote:

The birth of mass-market photography can be traced back to 1839, when French artist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented the daguerreotype: a photographic process which produced a permanent image on a plate of ionized silver. Daguerre’s new invention immediately took off, and by 1849, around 100,000 Parisians had their picture taken every year. Importantly, the advent of photography paralleled the rise of another then-fledgling art movement: Impressionism. Despite being originally mocked by critics, Impressionism (which got its name after a harsh critic of the movement wrote a derisive review entitled “The Exhibition of the Impressionists”) began gaining traction with the general public in the late-19th century.

Impressionism notably juxtaposes the newly-created world of photography. The general public saw photography as objective, and Impressionism served as painters’ response to that; while photography aimed to capture reality exactly as it is, Impressionism aimed to capture not reality but one’s perception of it. Claude Monet — a pioneer of the Impressionist movement — would often paint en plein air, capturing the light and color which most strongly resonated with him instead of nature’s exact reality. Indeed, I vividly remember turning a corner at the Met and finding myself enveloped in a room of water lilies. What I found most beautiful about the piece was Monet’s ability to communicate what he found joyous about the scene through his medium.

Photography continues to be viewed as objective by many to this day. As someone who sees photography as an art form in its own right, rather than an impartial capturing of the world around me, I often think about Claude Monet and the values he espoused as I create my work. The tools I regularly use when creating my photography — blocking, framing, color, light — are very similar to the tools Monet himself used. Much like Monet, my work aims to capture reality as I see it: the same sense of joy and wonder I feel about the world.

“For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.” -Claude Monet