Photography may not have played a major role in influencing Degas’ paintings of dancers, but it helped him realize the potential of creating unique works of art. In the words of Paul Valéry, an acquaintance of Degas, he “was among the first to see what photography could teach the painter – and what the painter must be careful not to learn from it� (qtd Scharf 190). He saw that the importance of creating art was not just to replicate what most people see, but to create a unique vision and show the viewer something they couldn’t see on their own. More than a camera, Degas was not merely a lens that replicated the image of a scene; he was an artist – and was able to create incredible masterpieces of dancers in natural positions. He realized that a lens made to record a moment based on the reflections of light could not approximate the perception of the human mind and the power of skilled hand with a paintbrush. Degas was such a skilled drawer that he was able to use his own observation and combine it with his imagination to recreate almost any pose a dancer could assume. Degas learned that in photography, an artist couldn’t apply his imagination in such a manner. In a description of Impressionism, 19th century critic Edmund Duranty wrote:
If one imagines… that at a given moment one could take a colored photograph of an interior, one would have a perfect accord, a truthful and typical expression, everything participating in the same feeling. If one waited until a cloud came to veil the daylight and immediately took a new picture, one would obtain a result similar to the first (qtd. Varnedoe 96)
The problem with photography is exactly this: an artist can imagine that he could take a picture at a moment and capture the precise impression that he desires, but it is not always possible. The moment that a person imagines does not always exist. Someone could spend forever waiting for the perfect cloud to come by to create the desired lighting effect but it may never come. In painting, this problem does not arise. Assuming that an artist has the necessary skills, as Degas most certainly did, he can paint exactly what he imagines. Degas believed that “art is not what you see but what you make others see� (Painter as Photographer). In his paintings, Degas invented and composed imaginary scenes, in which dancers pose, balanced at their peaks of instability. With the use of his sketches, he was able to others see the greatness of his vision and imagination.
Degas’ paintings of dancers are so unique because they allow the viewer to see an instant that cannot be captured by the human eye. While performing, a dancer is in constant motion. The human brain cannot isolate the peak instant of instability of a dancer’s movement. However, with the aid of sketches, Degas was able to depict this split second with an amazing sense of balance. He experimented with photography because he thought it would allow him to improve on this, but capturing the image on film was too slow. Degas must have been disappointed when he realized he could not accomplish this through photography, however, it allowed him to see that he d
id not need photography to accomplish this lofty goal. Degas perception was so great that he could capture more through sketches than with photographs. For this reason, Degas only photographed for a few months in 1895 (Kendall 56) and put down the lens almost as quickly as he picked it up. The photographs Degas took of dancers fell short of his expectations. For this reason, he tucked away the three yellow and orange glass negatives of dancers in his studio, where they were not discovered until after his death.