Photographers Who Paint, Painters Who Shoot
Issue 210 — How one hand washes the other.
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What happens when an artist picks up a camera in one hand and a paintbrush in the other? Many creators refuse to be confined to a single medium. Throughout history and today, notable artists have worked in both photography and painting, each medium enriching the other. This cross-pollination of skills and perspectives produces unique art. Can a photograph have the soul of a painting? Can a painting capture the immediacy of a photo? The following artists exemplify this dual mastery and show how the two art forms meet.
Artists Who Embraced Both Camera and Canvas
Edward Steichen (1879–1973): An early pioneer who was a painter as well as a photographer. Steichen co-founded the Photo-Secession movement in 1902, shooting soft-focus, atmospheric photos influenced by impressionist painting. He lived in Paris among avant-garde painters and briefly studied at the Académie Julian. His early photographs mimicked painterly Pictorialist styles, proving that his painter’s eye guided his camera.
Painting — Moonlit Landscape — © Edward Steichen 
Photograph — Voulangis © Edward Steichen Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004): Cartier-Bresson began as a Surrealist-influenced painter and later became a legendary candid photographer. In his later years, he put down his Leica to devote himself to drawing and painting once again. He famously remarked that photography was “never more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing”. This mindset is evident in his photos: he frames scenes with a classical artist’s sense of geometry and composition, calling his camera a kind of sketchbook. One medium was slow, the other speedy – but for him both required aligning “one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis”.
Painting — Table 1943 — © Henri Cartier Bresson | Magnum Photos 
French painter Henri Matisse at his home, villa "Le Rêve". Vence. Alpes-Maritimes. France. February 1944. © Henri Cartier-Bresson | Magnum Photos Saul Leiter (1923–2013): A New York photographer known for lyrical color street scenes, Leiter painted throughout his life. In fact, painting was his first love and he produced thousands of abstract paintings alongside his photos. His photographs often have a painterly quality: soft, blurred forms, rich colors, and layered reflections that approach abstraction. Leiter sometimes even painted on his pictures, blending the two media. His dual practice shows how a painter’s sensitivity to color and composition can translate into groundbreaking photography.
© Saul Leiter 
© Saul Leiter William Klein (1928–2022): Before revolutionizing street and fashion photography, Klein trained as a painter under French modernist Fernand Léger. This painter’s sensibility infused his bold photographic style. Klein’s images of cities are dynamic and graphic – he wasn’t afraid of high contrast, motion blur, or unusual compositions. His artistic sensibility, honed through painting, permeated all his work. Photography eventually became his primary medium, but he brought a painter’s eye to it. For example, in his famed 1950s New York series, the aggressive grain and graphic forms echo abstract expressionist canvases.
© William Klein 
© William Klein Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008): A celebrated painter and mixed-media artist who was also a passionate photographer. Early on, Rauschenberg couldn’t decide whether to be a photographer or a painter, so he did both. He often merged the two: his “Combines” attached photographs, prints, and paint on the same canvas. He even experimented with photosensitive chemical painting on photographic paper. This cross-medium approach lets him explore texture and reality in new ways. Rauschenberg’s example shows a two-way street: he brought a painter’s experimental mindset to photography, and photographic imagery into fine art painting.
Mixed Media — © Robert Rauschenberg 
Mixed Media — © Robert Rauschenberg David Hockney (b. 1937): A renowned British painter who embraced photography as an art in the 1980s. Hockney created intricate photo collages called “joiners,” assembling dozens of Polaroid snaps into a patchwork image. This was painting with a camera in a literal sense – he applied Cubist principles of multiple viewpoints to photography. Hockney used these multifaceted photo-collages as “foundational blueprints, guiding the structure and layout of his subsequent paintings”. By exploring one medium, he refreshed his approach to the other. Hockney was initially skeptical about the camera’s single-eyed view (“like a paralyzed Cyclops,” he quipped), but he overcame that by using many images to capture time and space. His work blurs the line: are his collages photographs or assembled paintings? The answer is both – one medium revitalizing the other.
Joiners — © David Hockney
(Many other artists have bridged these mediums. For instance, Man Ray alternated between experimental photography and painting. Chuck Close used photographic detail as the basis for his massive photorealistic portraits, later even making daguerreotype photos. The dialogue between painting and photography is ongoing.)
When Photography and Painting Meet
Perspective & Composition: Painters-turned-photographers often compose images with a careful, trained eye. They consider balance, form, and geometry in the frame as they would on a canvas. For example, Saul Leiter’s street photos use abstract compositions of color and shape that feel like a painting arranged in real life. Conversely, photographing can teach a painter new compositional ideas – the camera might capture spontaneous crops or angles a painter wouldn’t normally imagine. Many 19th-century painters like Degas and Eakins used photographs to study poses and candid compositions, and they reflected that in their brushwork. The frame of a photo can become the window of a painting.
Light & Color: Both mediums are essentially studies in light. A photographer who paints will have an acute understanding of light and shadow from observing reality through a lens. Likewise, a painter’s grasp of color theory can turn a photograph into a rich tapestry of hues. Influenced by watercolor, Saul Leiter excelled at finding gentle, muted color palettes in rainy urban scenes, almost as if he were “painting” with color film. On the flip side, painters might use photographic aids for color accuracy or detail – for instance, Chuck Close famously grids a reference photo to translate every tone into paint accurately. Photography introduced new pigments to painters’ palettes by revealing real-world color relationships.
Technique & Mindset: Perhaps the most significant difference is speed and process: snapping a shutter vs. building an image slowly. Yet, artists who do both say there is a shared mindset. Is a camera just a faster paintbrush? Cartier-Bresson called his camera an instrument of intuition, like quick sketching, whereas painting for him was a meditative return to detail. Still, both require patience, observation, and vision. Some cross-medium artists directly combine techniques – e.g., painting over prints, or using projection and collage. The experimental freedom of mixed media can lead to innovations in each field. Ultimately, whether they’re layering oil paint or double-exposing a negative, these artists are concerned with creating an image that conveys mood and meaning.
A Shared Creative Vision
Ultimately, does it matter whether an image is captured with a lens or crafted with a brush? The artists above show that art is art – a medium for expression. Painting and photography each have unique strengths, but in the hands of a versatile artist, they enrich one another. A painter’s sensibilities can make a photograph more poetic, and a photographer’s instinct can make a painting more immediate. This synergy challenges us to see the world anew. The next time you look at a striking image, ask yourself: camera or canvas? You might realize that the line between the two was never very fixed.
Sources: Notable examples and quotes have been drawn from artist biographies and interviews – for instance, The Guardian on Saul Leiter’s dual career, the Saul Leiter Foundation and retrospective notes, William Klein’s background from Holden Luntz Gallery, Rauschenberg’s curator remarks in The New Yorker, David Hockney’s collage insights, and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s own words on the relationship between sketching and shooting. These artists prove that whether through film or canvas, what ultimately shines is the creative vision.
Very interesting post, thanks!
This is great! As artists we are all to a degree ambidextrous with our creative skills. I was going to do a piece on photographers and musicians!