Art and Science

The fine arts and the hard sciences have more in common than most people believe, because both are driven by dopamine. The poet composing lines about a hopeless lover is not so different from the physicist scribbling formulas about excited electrons. They both require the ability to look beyond the world of the senses into a deeper, more profound world of abstract ideas. . . . The better you are at managing the most complex, abstract ideas, the more likely you are to be an artist.

—Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long, The Molecule of More

The following contemplations filled my mind on a cold winter morning in a silent and lonesome campsite in the desert. I woke up, as I always do, long before first light. This time of year, it takes me a few minutes after I wake to muster the fortitude to extract myself from my warm bed, pile on layers of clothing and wait for a bit, shivering, waiting to build up sufficient warmth to feel comfortable, or as close to it as I can get. I pass these awkward moments boiling a kettle of water for coffee, toasting some bread on my cast iron skillet for a morning sandwich, often while listening to a local radio station, podcast, or audio book. The words, the thoughts, the scents, help distract me from the cold until I am ready to go about the day’s work.

There is no describing the olfactory magic of the mixed aromas of a hearty camp breakfast blended with the scents of a wild desert. (I know the same is true of other natural environments, too, although I don’t experience them as often). Each season, the blend is a bit different. The food is largely the same, by force of habit, but the presence or absence of certain plant essences, the level of moisture in the air and in the soil, and many other factors, are to the experience of starting a day in the desert as fine spices are to a good dish.

Although a private affair, I consider it among my greatest accomplishments to have made a life for myself in which I get to start most days enjoying a rich cup of coffee with a hearty breakfast, watching as a desert landscape emerges slowly out of darkness, and to end most of these same days sipping some good tequila with a satisfying dinner as I watch the landscape fading slowly back into darkness. In these moments, I am often reminded of a favorite line by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. “Like a ship moving into port,” he wrote, “we of the desert come up into the night.”

The previous evening, I finished the last chapter of a book about the effects of dopamine, out of which I plucked the quotation above. The memory of what I had learned still lingered in my mind. Rather than start a new book, I decided instead to spend the morning catching up on some photography podcasts that had accumulated on my phone over the last few weeks.

A few minutes into an otherwise enjoyable episode, I felt a bit disappointed to hear the narrator repeat casually a tired old trope about photography being in some privileged position “both art and science.”

Is photography more a science, and photographers more scientific, just because the gadgets we use are more technologically advanced than brushes or chisels? Is photography more an art, and photographers more artistic, because it’s easier to make beautiful creations in photography than in media relying on pigments, notepads, word processors, or chunks of marble? Could one not equally make the case that ease and reliance on “black box” technological automation may in fact make photography potentially less artistic and less scientific than other pursuits?

These thoughts, fueled by the gradual infusion of caffeine into my bloodstream, set the following train of thought in motion.

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Art and science may enable certain technologies and creations. Art and science may also be the goals for certain works and technologies. But no technology can be said without further qualification to be an art or a science, let alone some elevated combination (if not a chimeric blend) of both.

At the risk of causing discomfort to some practitioners, I offer that if you ask most “nature photographers” about such things as physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, climate, the names and classification of flora, fauna, rocks, or other natural subjects before their lens, you will find that most have limited or no knowledge of the science of nature. Ask most “street photographers,” “humanitarian photographers,” “food photographers,” or “travel photographers” about the psychology, sociology, economics, history, anthropology, archaeology, gastronomy, climatology, ecology, or urban design practices explaining the appearances, behaviors, or predilections of the people, dwellings, rituals or other phenomena they photograph, and you will find that most have limited or no knowledge of these sciences.

You may consider the “science” of photography to be in its technological complexity: its materials, processes, the sensors, or computers built into photographic tools. Odds are most photographers have some, albeit often limited understanding of these. However, in this sense photography is no more scientific than radio broadcasting, filmmaking, electronic music, or other technologically advanced media.

As far as the sciences behind photographic images are concerned, the meanings and emotional impressions of photographic images rely on the same cognitive processes and obey the same rules of gestalt as any other visual work. Certainly, there is still much we don’t know about how these perceptions manifest in our neural circuitry, but the quest to understand more about it is the domain of scientific research (much of it employing the same creative thinking as our greatest artistry), having little to do photography.

Of course, there are some distinguishing characteristics (scientifically speaking) between photographs and other visual creations, but these difference in themselves don’t qualify photography uniquely as a science, certainly not more so than other media or images made by other methods of creation, recording, or investigation.

Likewise, ask most photographers who present their work as art about such things as historical art movements, philosophies of art, the lives and works of great artists, or details of any art beyond the style of photography they happen to practice themselves, and you will find that most have no knowledge of art (not even of just photographic art) in the larger sense.

Most photographers lack scientific knowledge of their tools and subjects. Most also lack an understanding of art being more than just the pursuit of pleasing aesthetics. Most photographers in truth are driven by neither science nor art, but by love of beautiful aesthetics, the enjoyment of tinkering with photographic tools, or by the social aspects of sharing a hobby with a like-minded community. Indeed, it is likely true that most photographers—including those who may later become great artists and scientists—begin their journeys in photography with one or more of these motivations, only later to discover the artistic or scientific uses possible in the medium.

It is worthwhile, I believe, for anyone who has pursued photography to a point of feeling comfortable with its basic technical and aesthetic aspects, to then explore further, whether in scientific or artistic directions, or both, rather than assume some endowment or mastery of “art and science” by the mere virtue of knowing how to use a camera.

There are some commonalities between science and art that are worth considering, and that may lead to useful insights, many of which may be relevant to photography as a medium for artistic and/or scientific expression. In both art and science, you will find some who practice by rote, according to formulas, toward predictable goals, or to make salable artifacts, and some who practice their work creatively, aiming to explore areas yet unknown, in search of discoveries, new knowledge, and new understanding. All these modes of work are also possible in photography. Which fit your own temperament and goals?

In both science and art, you will find some who seek to explore and understand the nature of visible and commonly experienced reality. In both, you will also find some who wish to probe beyond surface appearances, beyond common interpretations and styles, beyond the visible world, in hope of contributing to, enlarging, deepening, adding to reality as we know and experience it today—those described by science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin as, “the realists of a larger reality.” Which of these aspirations best suit your own hopes and interests?

Being a photographer does not by necessity make one an artist or a scientist. These qualifications, at least by their stricter definitions, are not inherent in any medium—photography or other. They need to be earned: studied, researched, practiced, explored, contemplated, honed. Photography, in the abstract, without further qualification, is neither art nor science.

Photography, like other media, is enabled by science but is not itself science. Photography, like other media, can also—not by default, but only if one chooses—be practiced as art. Photography is a medium—a way of relaying information, a means to many possible ends. Its value, as either art or science, is only as great as the value of the uses one makes of it: what one does with it, expresses with it, creates with it, enriches one’s living experiences with it, learns and discovers by it.

Forget the tropes and slogans. If you wish to be a better artist, study and practice art. If you wish to be a better scientist, study and practice science. Art and science—each separately, but more so when explored through and/or bound together by philosophy—may open doors to immense realms of knowledge, far beyond what any person can hope to learn in one lifetime. They may also offer one insights into the grandest and deepest mysteries of existence, far beyond what any person may hope to fully explore in one (or any number of) lifetimes. In short, both art and science possess the power to continually enrich and enlarge one’s knowledge, understanding, and living experiences for as long as one lives. The mere practice of photography guarantees none these.

Conversely, there is little to be gained and much to be lost—by an individual, and by the collective of humanity—by cheapening and trivializing the profundity that these words—art, science, philosophy—may come to mean for anyone willing to delve into their deepest regions. Photography may assist in these endeavors; photographs may express what one may learn and discover in these endeavors; but to say that photography is art or science or anything other than just a means of making images, is as naive as it is misinformed, if not outright hackneyed.

The argument is not difficult to make: the more you know about the science of photography, the better you’ll be able to employ your photographic tools in the service of your photographic goals; the more you know about the science of the things you photograph, the more likely you are to find them, to understand them, to portray them at their most elevated and interesting times; the more you know about the sciences of creativity and visual perception, the more original and expressive your work will be; the more you know about the history and philosophy of art and the works of other artists, the broader will be the range of ways you will know to express yourself in art and the greater will be your chances of making your own original contributions to the evolution of art beyond what has already been done.

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