by Editor Lourens Durand
Edited and published by Yvette Depaepe, the 28^th of May 2025

'Poetry 6816' by Dieter Plogmann

Renaissance art critics developed the theory: ut pictura poesis—as is painting so is poetry—in an attempt to acquire for painting the level of honour that poetry had received as a liberal art since antiquity. Aristotles Poetics  and Horace's Ars Poetica serve as the ancient roots from which ut pictura poesis sprung to life during the Renaissance. ⁽¹⁾

So it is an old story.

Many years later, Painter Robert Henri wrote, “Paint the flying spirit of the bird, rather than its feathers.” Similarly, poet Anton Chekhov said,” Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass”. Henri added, “one is a plea to painters, another to writers, but both beg the same thing: make me feel something. Don’t just tell me; don’t just show me. Make me feel it. ⁽²⁾

It is the same in poetry versus photography: poetry requires the poet to see, feel, react, eliciting words – the photographer needs to see, feel, visualise the poem, the colours and pictures and take the photo NOW.

Even if the shot is only a vision, and not possible to shoot immediately, store it in your mind and recreate it later in the studio, or wherever, but don’t lose that original inspiration.

Sure, we know all the rules of composition, light and dark, contrast, unity, balance, value and tone, but we need to listen to the poetic verse that the visualisation has given us and take the shot before the picture fades.

Let’s make a new quotation:
“Ut pictura poesis, sic photographia” (as is painting, so is poetry, so is photography).

Please enjoy the following works by 1X.com photographers which have, in my opinion, captured this concept.

Lourens Durand

'Poetry' by Dasha_and_Mari

'Poetry of a young woman' by Tina Signesdottir

'Poetry wriiten in Chaos' by Raffi Bashlian

'Poetry of tears' by Ivana Todorovic

'childhood dreams' by Enez-Eusa

'Fairytale' by Siegart

'distant' by Andrew Wixson

'le sol penché...' by Sylvain Devlichevitch

'la lumière...' by Sylvain Devlichevitch

'Broken Wings' by Annie Mitova

'Poetry of an old cemetery' by Fernand Hick

'Poetry' by cccbvdsdf

'Poetry of landscape' by Leszek Paradowski

'Poetry in petals........' by Moo Moodle

'Mysterious, orange, foggy Mastforest' by Saskia Dingemans

'Red-crowned Cranes' by Hua Zhu

'Summer wanderer' by Jaeyoun Ryu

'One Summer Night' by Shenshen Dou

'Happy solitude' by Georgios Bero

'Poem' by Filipe Correa

'blackcity's whitekid' by Miguel

'O wind' by Shenshen Dou 

'Sweet' by Shihya Kowatari

'Garden beauties' by Ben Goossens ✝

'Some Mornings...' by Robert Fabrowski

References
(1)Shannon O'Donoghue THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDAUNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL 2005
(2) David du Chemin Are Your Photographs Poetic? Part One. November 22, 2020