Annie Leibovitz
Picture-taking appears to be a mechanical process. When the shutter-release button is pressed, a picture forms on a sensor or film. On a sensor, the image gets recorded onto a memory card, the picture detailed instantly on an LCD screen. With film, the image is recorded on a negative for later developing. Photographers who want to make art don't see it this way. They feel that the way a photograph looks when you are finished shooting and developing it (or post-processing a digital image) can be categorized into a style.
To be sure, some refer to style to determine the subject of a photo—whether it's a landscape or a portrait, for example. These categorizations make sense, because photographers can identify the type(s) of photography they shoot. The only problem with them is that they are fairly mechanical ways of identifying photographs and photographers.
Another way of looking at style is to examine the sharpness and contrast of a shot. Two styles of sharpness and contrast competed for photographers' attention during the early 20th century— pictorialism and realism. Neither really ended up winning the hearts and minds of the photographer; instead, freedom ensued. Most photographers ended up shooting photographs at the settings they wanted and developing them according to their creative intuition.
Finally, there is style in the fashion world upon which photographers reflect and interpret according to their style of photography. Within this context, the concept of fashion style becomes integrated with photography style, each working off the other.
Photography has moved into the 21st century with a focus on style. Style in all of its forms is more important than ever. Galleries and museums all over the world are either bringing back the old styles of the past or re-creating them with current works. From vintage images of past to postmodern fashion photographs, style is propelling the art of photography into the future.
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