The Poor, Abused, Little Brother

       Photography is often the poor, abused sibling of the Fine Arts family.  It is like the little brother or sister that is told by his other siblings, "You're not really part of our family.  You were dropped off at our doorstep by gypsies."  I have often been guilty of that attitude myself (with photography, not my brothers, although I did say a few things to them while we were growing up that were less than cordial - heck they'd tell you that there were times I practically tortured their poor psyches). 
      Many fine artists and art snobs say of photography that it doesn't qualify as a real, honest to goodness category of the fine arts.  They say this because photography is the media used most often to merely (their words) record events or to make portraits.  As a medium it is often forced to be utilitarian.  Pictures of toothpaste tubes, deodorant containers, and soap bottles flood our newspapers and magazines.  Daily we see pictures of presidents and other heads of state shaking hands with somebody, and pictures of mayors and governors with a shovel, dedicating some new building project. 
      Then there's all the shutterbugs who devalue the art form by overuse that borders on abuse.  They fire off hundreds of thousands of crappy pictures with their digital cameras and their I-phones faster than a semi-automatic assault weapon.  Then they post them up on Facebook and Twitter and expect us to "like" them.  This isn't a new problem, because before that people wasted our poor eyes with Instamatics and Polaroids, and before that there was the Brownie.  We've all had to sit through sessions that went something like, "and here's a picture of Uncle Ed coming up from behind the barn, ...and here's Uncle Ed picking up the bucket beside the barn, ... and here's Uncle Ed coming up to the front of the barn with a bucket in his hand, ... and here's the Spanish Inquisition."
      "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition." 
      "Nobody expects......." and we know how it all goes from here. 
      Photography gets a bad rap.  And who then is painting to be talking such trash about photography anyway?  Before the advent of photography all that utilitarian stuff was the responsibility of painting, drawing, woodcuts, and engraving.  That's like the older brothers teasing the younger one for having to go grocery shopping with Mom, when they all had to do it when they were young. 
      Every so often though, someone comes along to break the mold and make us say, "hey you really are from the Fine Arts family and weren't dropped off by gypsies after all.  Painting lied." 
      One I just recently discovered is someone named Ladona Tornabene.  I think she might be local to up around here, because I saw her work spotlighted on one of our locally produced PBS programs.  I was truly astounded by how great her work is.  To find more of her work or even see how to spell her name correctly I had to go to the program's web site.  Then I found out that the program I watched was from almost five years ago, so I had to peruse through the archive till I found it.  Then I did a google image search to find some examples of her work. 
     She finds unique color juxtapositions found in nature.  This is no mere recording of the surrounding world.  Below are some examples of her work.