When we talk about producing fine art photography, there are many different aspects that are routinely covered. Things like composition, the use of color, expression and emotion are all things that we use to make images more powerful. One thing that is rarely talked about, however, is symbolism, which is strange because in my opinion, symbols are quite possibly the most powerful tool at your disposal.

What is symbolism? In a nutshell, a symbol is something used to represent something else, something meaningful, so it follows that symbolism is the use of symbols to express the meanings that you desire.

The most interesting thing about symbolism is that it extends across all forms of art and design. Some symbolism crosses cultural boundaries, and other symbols are only known to the people of a particular culture, living in a particular period of time.

The Victorians, for instance, had the Language of Flowers. It was commonly understood during that period and culture that you could use flowers and their associated symbols to send messages to people. A sprig of the baby’s breath flower represented purity and innocence, while a pink rosebud represented a new love. Combine the two, and the receiver of these flowers understood that the sender was sending a message of pure, innocent love.

You can see these same sorts of meanings throughout the art world. In Medieval and Renaissance art, for instance, you could look at horses within paintings to see the deeper meaning. Pale horses represented death, black horses stood for famine and red horses meant war. Candles tended to represent faith when burning, or death or corruption when painted as extinguished. Baskets of fruit meant abundance, and more, particular fruits told a tale about the kinds of abundance that the painting’s subject enjoyed. Lemons, for example, were a rare and expensive fruit, so if you saw them, you knew that you were looking at wealth symbolized.

Of course, nowadays, we don’t recognize all of these symbols the way the people living in those times did. Our culture and worldview is utterly different, so we have our own symbols. In fact, many modern artists seek to break away from common symbolism and decide to make their own meaning with objects, colors and more. Let’s take a look at modern symbolism and how you can use it to great effect in your work...