Photography Symbol Analysis

Photography in “The Real Thing” represents the act of documenting reality, and how doing so is not creating art. In photography, a photo is an exact image of the real-life subject. Art, on the other hand, interprets reality to inspire a feeling. To Henry James, these two are opposites. To demonstrate this difference, James connects Major Monarch and Mrs. Monarch with photography, and uses it to explain why they are incompatible subjects for art.

When the artist asks the beautiful Monarchs if they have any similar experience to modeling, they tell him that they have been photographed many times. In fact, photographers “were always after [them]” to do take their pictures. As he works with the Monarchs as models, though, the artist quickly realizes that what made them such attractive photographic subjects is exactly what makes them unsuitable for the creation of art. As the artist draws the Monarchs, he realizes that, try as he might, each drawing “looked like a photograph or a copy of a photograph.” They are too stiff, always look the same, and cannot suggest anything but who they are. This is fine for a photograph, especially as the story takes place during the time in history when people had to sit motionless in order to have their picture taken, but this inflexibility and rigidity is bad for art and makes the artist’s illustrations look flat and lifeless. The artist needs variety, expression, and models who can suggest other “types,” or characters.

The artist’s working-class models of Oronte and Miss Churm don’t actually look like any of the “types” for which they model. No one would photograph them to try to represent an aristocrat, for instance. But their real appearance doesn’t matter in the artist’s studio. What matters is the “feeling” or idea that they capture for the artist; from that point, the “alchemy of art” can transform Oronte and Miss Churm into whatever “types” the artist needs. In short, with Oronte or Miss Churm as models, the artist can interpret (as opposed to document) what he sees to create feeling in his art. In this way, “the real thing could be so much less precious than the unreal.”