Not my final post--just a comment: freezing a moment in time - photography's influence on painting

I just wanted to say that I've been thinking about the paintings of Edgar Degas all term—for how his practice of photography influenced his paintings, particularly his compositions and how he composes to create the impression of an instant frozen in time—not the universal forever of Old Master paintings.

In his family portrait of the Count Lepic and his daughters (the painting is called "Place de la Concorde"), instead of a unified group portrait, we see the three of them, plus the family dog, milling around the square, a big gaping hole in the center of the picture space, as well as space between each of the three portrait subjects. There's even some strange guy entering the picture space on the left—it appears as though Degas clicked the shutter before everyone had time to pose and look out at the photographer/artist and before the artist had time to shoo the guy out of the picture. The depiction of a moment in time, rather than the universal forever, is partly what makes the Degas so modern, as compared to, say, this Rubens.