Introduction

In a study published in 1973, a team of primatologists at the University of Edinburgh conducted an experiment whereby chimpanzees were given paint and paper and encouraged to create. While the chimps appeared to enjoy the process of splashing paint on paper, their “art” was realized only through human involvement. Observers took away each painting when they deemed that it had merit. Left to their own devices, the chimps splashed on until they tired of the game. They had no sense of a beginning or end to their creations. Later, the chimps showed no further interest in their paintings, even when they were hung on the walls of their cages. The “beauty” of their own work was beyond them. In the quiet evolution that has elevated man above beast, we have taken pride in claiming our opposable thumbs, our upright gait, and our larger brain. But perhaps the strongest indicator of evolution is the elevation of the impractical in our lives. Not only do we want to survive, we want to live. Fire, created for warmth, also mesmerized with dancing tongues of intrigue. Food, necessary for life, was adapted for pleasure. Rhythm and melody evolved from simple communication to complex sounds that have comforted every culture. Oral tradition moved from mere communication to sagas, stories, poems, legends, wit. Even the least sophisticated or artistic among us can be moved by the right combination of notes or movements or fragrance or play of light. Most of us are moved to create beauty in our own lives with a vase of flowers, a picture on the wall, the perfect hat. We hum and sniff and arrange and sample and see. When we are touched by a moment of visual beauty, we want to hold it in our hearts. And photographs have become our memory keepers. Photos are evidence that we have lived and traveled and experienced and loved. We are the first generation who, mostly, know what our parents and grandparents looked like; who recognize a familiar earlobe or dimple or brow. There is comfort in seeing that we are part of history … of knowing what our parents looked like on their wedding day, or how our children appeared within minutes of their first breath. Such pictures are profoundly beautiful to us. When people are asked about possessions they would rescue from a burning building, photo albums are usually at the top of the list. Each family’s troves of prints and slides and hard drives are proof that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. But even among our own family photographs, there are some that rise above the others. These are the photos that have caught a moment of emotion or composition or light that makes them ignite a deeper response in the viewer. Photography has opened our eyes to a multitude of beauties, things we literally could not have seen before the advent of the frozen image. It has greatly expanded our notion of what is beautiful, what is aesthetically pleasing. Items formerly considered trivial, and not worth an artist’s paint, have been revealed and honored by a photograph: things as pedestrian as a fencepost, a chair, a vegetable. And as technology has developed, photographers have explored completely new points of view: those of the microscope, the eagle, the cosmos. Working in the mid-19th century, the earliest photographers were consumed with the science of “fixing” an image. It is hard for us to imagine, now, what a thrill that possibility held. Painters had tried to faithfully reproduce reality. But the thought of recording the actual subject, of freezing the real thing, of holding a permanent mirror to ourselves and the world, seemed miraculous. This book is about the beauty discovered by the seers among us—the beauty they have discovered through the miracle of photography. In 1841, when William Henry Fox Talbot patented the photograph, he called it a “calotype,” from the Greek words for “beautiful impression.” He called the camera “the pencil of nature.” In the century and a half since then, photography has become a treasured part of most lives. In the right hands, the camera has become as powerful as a paintbrush, a pen, a keyboard. It is a true and permanent record/mirror of ourselves. Early in my career as a photographer, I was privileged to experience the thrill that early photographers must have felt. While in the southern African country of Namibia, I had the extraordinary experience of photographing a small group of remote, desert tribeswomen. Upon meeting them, I decided it would be a friendly gesture to take a Polaroid picture for them. As I handed them the developing image, it was clear that they had no idea what I was doing. But as they watched the image appear on the Polaroid, I got a glimpse of what my predecessors must have seen. Living in a desert devoid of reflective surfaces, these women had never seen their own faces before. They squealed with laughter and delight as they confirmed with one another which face belonged to whom. It didn’t matter whether the image was poorly or beautifully fixed. The photograph had given them a memory to keep forever, to share with their neighbors or revisit privately or tack on a tree. So what is it that delights the human eye and allows us to proclaim that a photograph is beautiful? Photography depends on the trinity of light, composition, and moment. Light literally makes the recording of an image possible, but in the right hands, light in a photograph can make the image soar. The same is true with composition. What the photographer chooses to keep in or out of the frame is all that we will ever see—but that combination is vital. And the moment that the shutter is pressed, when an instant is frozen in time, endows the whole image with meaning. When the three—light, composition, and moment—are in concert, there is visual magic. Let us begin with light. Light literally reveals the subject. Without light, there is nothing: no sight, no color, no form. How light is pursued and captured is the photographer’s constant challenge and constant joy. We watch it dance across a landscape or a face, and we prepare for the moment when it illuminates or softens or ignites the subject before us. Light is rarely interesting when it is flawless. Photographers may be the only people at the beach or on the mountaintop praying for clouds, because nothing condemns a photograph more than a blazingly bright sky. Light is usually best when it is fleeting or dappled, razor sharp or threatening, or atmospheric. On a physiological level, we are all solar powered. Scientific studies have proved that our moods are profoundly affected by the amount of light we are exposed to. Lack of sun has been linked to loss of energy and even depression. Light in a photograph sets an emotional expectation. It can be soft or harsh, broad or delicate, but the mood that light sets is a preface to the whole image. Consider the light in a stunning scenic by Sam Abell. It is the quality of light through morning fog that blesses this image and turns a forest into a field of light, shadow, and color, where every tree takes on a personality. Composition represents the structural choices the photographer makes within the photographic frame. Everything in the photo can either contribute or distract. Ironically, the definition of what makes a picture aesthetically pleasing often comes down to mathematics: the geometric proportions of objects and their placements within the frame. When we look at a beautiful photograph with an objective eye, we can often find serpentine lines, figure eights, and triangular arrangements formed by the objects within the frame. The balance, or mathematical proportion, of the objects makes up the picture’s composition: a key element in any beautiful image. Look closely at photographer James Stanfield’s charming composition of a child jumping for joy in a doorway at the Louvre (this page). It is the moment that draws us in, but that moment is set in a striking composition of the doorway and the architecture beyond. The geometric composition of the photograph makes the child look small, and even more appealing. The third crucial element in a photograph is the moment when the shutter is pressed. The moment captured in a beautiful image is the storytelling part of the photograph. Whether a small gesture or a grand climax, it is the moment within a picture that draws us in and makes us care. It may be the photographer’s most important choice. If a special moment is caught, it endows the whole image with meaning. Often, waiting for that moment involves excruciating patience, as the photographer anticipates that something miraculous is about to happen. At other times it’s an almost electric reaction that seems to bypass the thought process entirely and fire straight to instinct. Capturing that perfect moment may be a photographer’s biggest challenge, because most important moments are fleeting. Hands touch. The ball drops. A smile flashes. Miss the moment and it is gone forever. Light, composition, and moment are the basic elements in any beautiful photograph. But there are three other elements that draw the viewer in and encourage an emotional response. These are palette, time, and wonder. Palette refers to the selection of colors in a photograph that create a visual context. Colors can range from neon to a simple gradation of grays in a black-and-white photograph. Even in the abstract, colors can make us feel elated or sad. The chosen palette sets up the mood of the whole image. It can invite or repel, soothe or agitate. We feel calm in a palette of pastels. Icy blues can make us shiver. Oranges and reds tend to energize. For example, Martin Kers’s photograph on this page of this book has a soothing palette of yellows and greens that almost glows. It beckons us to walk down a path in the Netherlands. It’s a simple composition made memorable by its palette. Other images stand out because of the freezing or blurring of time. There are the lovely images of raindrops falling, lightning flashing, and athletes frozen in midair. There are also time exposures that allow us to see a choreography of movement within the still frame. The laundry flutters, the traffic merges, the water flows. In Abigail Eden Shaffer’s photograph of a tern in flight (this page), the high-speed exposure allows us to see things that our eyes literally cannot see: every feather supporting the bird’s flight, the arc of the wings, the catchlight in the bird’s eye. High-speed photography has been a gift to both art and science. Wonder refers to the measure of human response when the photograph reveals something extraordinary—something never seen before, or seen in a fresh, new way. Wonder is about insight and curiosity. It is an expression of the child inside every one of us. Some photographers, following their childlike sense of wonder, have literally given their lives in pursuit of images so wonderful that they must be seen. The National Geographic Society has supported their efforts for more than a hundred years. In sending photographers up in balloons, down in submersibles, into remote rain forests, and across empty deserts, the Society has delivered wonder on a grand scale. Light, composition, and moment come together in a photograph to bring us the ultimate reality: a view of the world unknown before the invention of the camera. Before photography, the basic artistic rules of painting were rarely violated. Images were made to please, not to capture reality. But as photography evolved, painterly rules were often rejected in the pursuit of fresh vision. Photographers became interested in the real world, warts and all, and it was the accidental detail that was celebrated. Photography invited the world to see with new eyes—to see photographically—and all of the arts benefited from this new point of view. Painters, sculptors, designers, weavers, dancers all expanded their vision of beauty by embracing the photographer’s love of reality. And when the photographer is creative with the basic elements in a photograph, the resulting image has greater appeal. A surprising truth about photography is that each element is most effective not when it captures perfection but rather when it reveals the imperfect. Photographs are most eloquent when they impart a new way of seeing. What is more wonderful than the imperfect moment, when a simple scene turns sublime because a cat entered the room, the mirror caught a reflection, or a shaft of light came through the window. And real beauty depends upon how the image moves us: A photograph can make us care, understand, react, emote, and empathize with the wider world by humanizing and honoring the unknown. Photographs have been a crucial element in saving whales, demystifying cultures, and bringing the wide world closer. With these basic aesthetic tools, photographers have evolved from scientists longing to “fix” an image—any image—to artistic visionaries. Along the way, the still image has evolved from being merely a document to being a stunning documentary of the 19th and 20th centuries. Photographs have created a new ethic of seeing. They have greatly expanded our notion of what is beautiful. It is to photography’s credit that it has found beauty in the most humble places, and that it has ushered in a new democracy of vision. People from all walks of life are able to feast their eyes on subjects remote and grand. They are able to hold them in their hands. Perhaps most important, all people can see themselves and their private worlds in beautiful ways because, in the words of Susan Sontag, “To photograph is to confer importance.” Photographs have given us visual proof that the world is grander than we imagined, that there is beauty, often overlooked, in nearly everything.