Photography is a creative and artistic way of communicating to the world issues in society. Each photographer has her/his own style, purpose and visual representation to help her/him create artwork that reflects her/his personality, background, and, at the same time, communicating to the viewer the happenings of society, the environment and the world. Photographers use their own style to tell a story of their surroundings in a creative, and sometimes surrealistic way. This article will focus on three photographers because of their focus on nature, whether it be animals, the environment, a political message, or the transformation of a painted image into a photographic image. Wegman, Misrach and Webber each display their own unique perception of reality through their eyes by creating artwork about societal issues and their environments.

  Wegman, who is known for his conceptual art form, uses his dog as his model after purchasing his male Weimaraner dog–Man Ray–as a puppy in 1970. He photographs the playfulness of puppies utilizing different poses, background color and environments, making sure the foreground and one object creates a theme and mood for the photographs. For example, in Puppies Porfolio, a series of photographs using the same puppies in different themes show the background color and an object blending with the dog’s pose, and creating a theme. Such theme communicates to the viewer Wegman’s intention, whether it be warmth, playfulness, innocence, sweetness, coldness, or just a man’s best friend. He depicts these intentions in such photographs by using a net and a dog-shaped bag with three dogs rummaging through it, a puppy being bounced in the air by unknown male hands, puppies snuggled together sleeping on an old faded car seat in the middle of a studio, and puppies in a scenic country meadow. Furthermore, Wegman uses color and his dog to create surreal photographs. For example, a photograph of an autumn forest background with an old wooden shack, wooden logs covering a rocky stream, and his brown dog is well-blended with the wooden bridge and the background. Another photograph depicts a closeup of his dog’s head in the middle of yellow maple leaves background, where the brown dog’s yellow eyes match the yellow-colored leaves.  Also, he blends the background with his dog and a knit blanket, portraying his brown dog covered by the knit blanket, and the light blue background color gives the photograph a cool feeling of Winter.

  In contrast to Wegman’s conceptualism utilizing the playfulness of dogs, Richard Misrach portrays his surroundings and environment in a political manner by playing with colors and exposures to create explosive-looking scenes. Since his photographs are very simple, the colors and lighting he uses send messages to his viewers about his intentions. Some of these photographs portray the skies as erupting with anger because of the combination of blue, yellow, orange and gray colors swirled together, creating a stormy appearance.  Along with such stormy-looking skies, the sea appears dark and gloomy, adding an eerie feeling to the approaching storm.  Furthermore, Misrach also photographs warmth in his desert scenes by playing with the sunlight to create a beautiful rainbow on the soft and golden sand. The brightness of the sun’s rays against the mountains create golden rocky hills. With such photographs, he portrays the beauty of the sun shining upon nature, educating the viewers on the value of the earth, and to appreciate and preserve it rather than taking advantage of its valuable resources. He portrays this same message in a harsh political manner in his photograph of a spacious and dry desert that is filled with hard, cracked, golden and sandy earth, while in the background there is a faded and foggy mountains in the distance. From the foreground, there are tire tracks moving toward the distant mountains and the horizon, and a large deflated earth ball, colored like a globe, is placed in the center of the photograph. Such thought-provoking, strong and visual language represents the wastefulness of the earth and its resources, creating a certain emptiness that insinuates that the world might be coming to an end. He further creates other strong messages in his photographs of a dark and burning desert as well as a littered desert with a small fire spark, insinuating the destruction of the earth.

  But Misrach also portrays beauty in his Greek archaeological photograph of the inside of an ancient, cracked and marble floor with three human shadows, where straight ahead, between two large and white columns, a picturesque scene of a lighted city(Athens), against a midnight blue sky, shines below. The viewer looking at this photograph feels that she/he is standing in the middle of an ancient room with dim lights and peering out of a large and high window at the midnight blue horizon and the lighted city below. It looks very beautiful and romantic.

  The third photographer, Nancy Webber, transforms famous and old Italian paintings into modern photographs by replicating the same scene into a different form. The model in the photograph has the same exact pose, gesture, clothing, expression and form as the Italian portraiture in the painting. Webber creates a modern photographic work of art by copying famous Italian painters’ work of art. And, in the process, she creates her own art form through others’ art form, but with a slight modern edge to the original art form. For instance, instead of the model posing with a small monkey by her side as in the painting, the modern photographic version uses a small Pomeranian dog. The human models in the photographs always look identical to the human models in the paintings because of the details and perfection, but the background and objects surrounding the models are modernized in the photographs.

  As artists, these photographers hope to educate their viewers of psychological, socio-economic, aesthetic, political, historical and environmental issues that are facing the world today as well as of a particular era; and, in the process, influence people to contribute to the earth’s well-being and the preservation of its valuable resources that they need for survival. Such photographers educate their viewers on such matters as controlling the animal population by spaying and neutering pets, animal rights, protecting wildlife, nature and the earth, learning from the past in order to better the future, and societal cultures. These three photographers all blend their backgrounds, main subject matter and objects with complementary colors and lighting in order to get their message across to their viewers. And through such visual representation, they each display their own perception of reality, or surreality.