Writing my latest post about the possible comparison between the broader artistic process and the proof-of-work mechanism made me notice something particular about photography. Additionally, watching the film Colours of Time, set in the early twentieth century when photography was nascent and evolving alongside Impressionism, brought the final pieces of this thought together. I’ll take this opportunity to talk about Eugène Boudin, regarded as one of Claude Monet’s mentors.

Eugène Boudin spent years making pastel studies of clouds in remarkable volume, meticulously recording contextual details such as weather, wind, and light. This discipline allowed him to develop a unique ability to render the power and contrast of light on clouds, an understanding later distilled into Monet’s work and it left behind a vast corpus of drawings that document his acquisition of skill.

This brings me to the point: similarly to Boudin, a photographer who applies the same discipline to street scenes would produce a large body of images that show the evolution of their practice. From this perspective, the artistic process in photography can be documented and demonstrated, underscoring its status as an art.

However, a key difference appears when we focus on material traces. Drawings and paintings carry their making in a physical way. An erased line dents the paper and influences subsequent marks. In painting, layers of pigment build the desired effects. These traces are visible to a discerning eye and serve as a kind of proof of the work’s creation process. In live arts, the process is even more accessible, because the work is as much the result of preparation as of the moment of performance.

A single photograph generally carries few, if any, visible traces of its own making. A skilled street photographer may capture an everyday scene perfectly, thanks to experience and countless hours spent searching for that light, moment, and vantage. Yet the resulting image could look identical to one a novice snaps by chance on a smartphone. Without the context of long-term practice, it can be impossible to determine which image is intentional and, consequently, a potential work of art.

This ambiguity introduces an underlying doubt when we encounter a singular photograph, and it helps explain why photography is such a contested art form. That said, it also opens a field of inquiry: how might photographers embed or otherwise document traces of a photograph’s making within the work itself?

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