NickTrop
Veteran
Today "art" is just an artificial term used only for marketing and self promotion purposes. Long before that it meant exceptional crafmanship...And by the way - in my opinion photography itself is not an art and never was. Only a "couple" of guys made art using photography, and that's it. :]
Yes, and yes. There need not be any long winded books about "what is art" and "what is not art", which is the most pseudo-intellectual of all subjects where windbags talk in circles.
Does it successfully attempt to use an artistic medium to communicate Truth with a viewer? Art.
If this is not the objective? Not art. Craft.
A simple, logical cause->effect "if - then".
Simple as that, all there is to it.
Sadly, art/craft have become semantically intertwined, probably for the reasons you've stated. Nor does the emotional impact have anything to do with whether something is "art" or not, which is surely part of the confusion too. A religious depiction of the crucifiction can make someone cry - not art. And work of art may have negligible emotional impact and that aspect has nothing to do with if it is "art" or not.
Michelangelo's The Sistine Chapel - not art
Rodin's The Gates of Hell - art
Simple...
99.99999999% of photography (and I can't think of any examples that would qualify off hand) are not art. It is too innately and inherently constrainted to use this medium as a tool to create art. Its introduction, however, forced painters - however skilled and usually commissioned to depict reality, to become artists. - Or perish, supplanted by a new technology that depicts reality exactly in a way that is better, faster, easier, and cheaper than they could ever possibly do under most circumstances, regardless how skilled they might be...
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