Music, Visualization and the Multi-Stage Account of Photography

Wilson, Dawn

Abstract

Like his contemporary, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams claimed that visualization is essential for creating fine art photography. But, unlike Weston, he believed that a print from a negative is like a performance from a score. In his analogy, a photographer’s visualization is like a musician’s composition: once it has been set down in a ‘score’, it can be expressively rendered by different performers, making it possible to create and critically appreciate ‘performances’ with different qualities. I argue that this music-photography analogy makes Adams’s conception of photographic visualization more fruitful than Weston’s alternative. However, while I agree with Adams that a print is analogous to a performance, I criticise his idea that a negative is like a score. I argue that he holds a traditional, single-stage conception of photography, which led him to overlook a key distinction between undeveloped film and the developed negative. The multi-stage account of photography that I defend not only remedies this problem but also shows how Adams’s proposal can be fully realized in digital photography. Most significantly, it invites theorists and practitioners to expand the music-photography analogy by considering wider varieties of music—not only performances from a score.

Citation

Wilson, D. (2024). Music, Visualization and the Multi-Stage Account of Photography. Debates in Aesthetics, 18(2), 13-46

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 13, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Dec 17, 2024
• Publication Date: Dec 17, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jul 30, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 10, 2025
• Journal: Debates in Aesthetics
• Electronic ISSN: 2514-6637
• Publisher: British Society of Aesthetics
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 13-46
• Keywords: Photography; Music; Visualization; Composition; Ansel Adams; Edward Weston; Multi-Stage account
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4748445
• Publisher URL: https://debatesinaesthetics.org/debates-in-aesthetics-vol-18-no-2/#WILSON