Photography captures natural light and colors through a lens that leaves its chromatic scars on a portion of a strand of film that when developed, can portray a realistic impression of that moment in time. To call a picture a piece of reality is an open ended statement. The common pictures that one would take to the one hour photo are much more a tune to unaltered reality than the professional photographer s. The pictures they take are burned and shaded using differential exposures and other techniques to produce a much more aesthetically pleasing final product. In my opinion it does, but the picture is still a piece of a moment, a rendition of an actual concrete event, even if it is altered.
Painting captures the artist s own reality through the use of brushes and paint.
The history of painting extends back to Cro-Magnon times on cave walls in Europe and Asia, but it shares the same pedigree that photography does in modern times. It began from the human impulse to immortalize one s own reality, and to share it with others. As I addressed in the first paragraph, reality is different for everyone, so the necessity for exactness of depiction is relative to those who are trying to share or immortalize a moment. The painting of Jan Van Eyck is in many ways more real than a photographic reality, with an attention to detail that far surpasses that of the average photograph. Then you have Mark Rothko, whose bold color abstractions are depictions of his own reality, although they are completely absent of form.