Frederick O'Loughlin

A Picture Paints, photography project

The art of painting went a different direction to photography, but is it possible to recreate the feeling and style of impressionist and other painters

Photography is an incredible medium. For years painters tried to recreate completely realistic images. The greatest painters developed a truly remarkable talent yet still fell short. Then suddenly someone comes along with a box that makes photo-realistic images and disrupts everything. Even the word "Photo-realistic" itself is a testament to this.

This triggered a lot of interesting things with paint. Impressionism looked to capture the feel of a scene rather than its literal portrayal. Painting went towards the more abstract, and photography went another way. I have always been interested in abstract photography. But this collection represents a specific kind of abstract photography, one that takes inspiration from such paintings. So here is the question. Is it possible to capture feelings and impressions with a camera without making it photorealistic?

This is in part an exploration of the link between photography and painted media. But it was also a challenge to create photographs that someone might hang on the wall. Outside of family and tourist photographs, it is not all that common to hang a photograph on the wall. It is much more typical to hang a painting. So, you will have to let me know to what degree you think I achieve this.

Great. Show me the paint-agraphs