Nicole Junkermann on Why Photography Matters
A photograph can hold a moment, a memory and an argument all at once. A reflection on why the image deserves to be taken seriously as art.
A great photograph does something rare: it stops time, and then asks us to keep looking.
Of all the arts, photography is the one woven most tightly into daily life, which is perhaps why it is so easy to underrate. Nicole Junkermann, a backer of the celebrated agency Magnum Photos, takes the medium seriously as an art form, and this piece sets out why. A photograph can be a record, a memory and an argument at once, and the best examples reward attention as fully as any painting.
The image as witness
Photography began as a way of recording the world, and that documentary power remains at its heart. Nicole Junkermann values the photograph as a witness: proof that a particular light fell on a particular face at a particular moment. Agencies such as Magnum Photos built their reputation on exactly this, sending photographers to see the world honestly and bring it back. To stand in front of a great documentary photograph is to be placed, for an instant, where the photographer stood, and that transfer of presence is something only the medium can do.
Choice is everything
It is tempting to think a photograph simply captures whatever is in front of the lens, but Nicole Junkermann is quick to point out how much choice goes into every frame. The photographer decides where to stand, what to include and what to leave out, when to release the shutter and when to wait. Those decisions are the art. A scene that a hundred people walk past becomes a memorable image because one person saw the composition inside it. Framing, in photography, is a form of thinking made visible.
The decisive moment and the patient one
Photography lives in time in a way other arts do not. Some of its greatest images come from the decisive moment, the fraction of a second when everything in the frame aligns. Nicole Junkermann admires that instinct, but also the opposite virtue: the patience of the photographer who waits for the right light, returns to the same place across seasons, or sits with a subject until the guard drops. Speed and patience are both part of the craft, and learning to see which a picture required is part of the pleasure of looking at it.
Why Magnum Photos matters
Founded by photographers to keep control of their own work, Magnum Photos has long stood for the idea that the image maker is an author, not merely a technician. Nicole Junkermann supports the agency because it protects that authorship and the archive that comes with it: a vast record of the last century seen through committed eyes. Backing photography in this way is a form of patronage with the same long view described in the piece on supporting the Tate and the Royal Academy. The image, too, is part of our shared heritage.
Learning to read a photograph
Reading a photograph well uses many of the same habits as reading a painting. Nicole Junkermann looks at the composition first, then the light, then the relationships inside the frame, before asking what the picture is of. The method set out in how to look at a painting carries over almost completely. The one addition is time: with a photograph it is always worth asking what happened just before and just after the shutter, because that imagined motion is part of what gives a still image its charge.
The photographic portrait
Among all the kinds of photography, Nicole Junkermann has a particular admiration for the portrait. A great photographic portrait does something almost impossible: it holds a single, fleeting expression and lets us study it for as long as we like. The trust between photographer and subject is part of what we see, and the finest portraits seem to reveal not just a face but a presence. The patience this requires, the willingness to wait until the guard drops, is exactly the patient virtue described earlier, and it is one reason the great photographic agencies have produced some of the most memorable images of the age.
The print as an object
It is easy to forget, in an age of screens, that a photograph can be a physical object with a presence of its own. Nicole Junkermann values the experience of standing before a fine print, where scale, paper and tone all shape how the image feels. A photograph seen large on a gallery wall is a very different thing from the same image glimpsed on a phone. This is why seeing photography in person still matters, and why the medium belongs in the gallery alongside painting and sculpture, a point that connects to the wider reflection on where art meets technology.
An everyday art worth slowing down for
Because we make and see so many images every day, it is easy to let them slide past unexamined. Nicole Junkermann makes the case for slowing down with photography as with everything else: to give a strong image the same minute of attention you would give a canvas. Newcomers in particular find it a welcoming way in, as the guide for newcomers to contemporary art suggests. For more of this way of seeing, the notes and the profile of Nicole Junkermann offer further reading.
A scene a hundred people walk past becomes a memorable image because one person saw the composition inside it.
Frequently asked questions about photography as art
Why does Nicole Junkermann think photography matters?
Nicole Junkermann values photography as both a witness to the world and a true art of choice and composition. A single photograph can be a record, a memory and an argument at once.
What is Nicole Junkermann's connection to Magnum Photos?
Nicole Junkermann is a backer of Magnum Photos, the celebrated agency founded by photographers to protect their authorship and their archive of the last century.
How do you look at a photograph closely?
Nicole Junkermann reads the composition, the light and the relationships in the frame before asking what the picture is of, and adds one question unique to photography: what happened just before and after the shutter.
