Is Photography Art?

[vladhed]

Painting is dead, painting is dead! Man has discovered how to make 'instant' photographic images of real scenes! Burn your brushes and canvases!

"I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn". -- Pablo Picasso

I think the title of this thread is a little mis-leading. The article is not questioning whether or not a photograph can be considered art, he is just saying that Art Photography is a commodity and the over abundance of images is diluting the values of the individual photograph.

Paint, canvas, brushes, film, rangefinder, DSLR, CF cards, Photoshop - these are all just tools which you need to master to some degree if you want to produce "Art" with them. DSLRs and Photoshop simply put a familliar medium in the hands of a population of people that previously found painting, drawing or photography too technically frustrating.

There is good digital art out there - it's just awash in tonnes more bad digital art - the S/N ratio is just too low to make it worth ones while to look for it.

The thing about contemporary painting and drawing (and to a degree RFF photography) is that the relative difficulty in mastering the technique tends to weed out everyone but the truely committed and "good" artist.

I think this is one of the reasons why the artistic quality of RFF (website, the books) photographs is so much higher than other community-based photography collectives. I see a lot of technically excellent photographs everywhere, but few truely artistic shots - as if the photograher is merely satisfied with the technical outcome and hasn't answered the basic question: is there a point to this photograph?

 

[x-ray]

He has a degree in something or other, probably a Doctorate of Tom and Jerry. It is common enough, look at the amount of graduates today whose handwriting is barely legible and littered with IM spellings and abbreviations, because they have always used keyboards and spell checkers.

I'm also getting the door slammed in my face because i don't have an MFA. It seems what you've done in life isn't as important as the way you look, the degree you have hanging on the wall or the paint worn off your camera. I frequently go to museums when traveling particularly if there is a photo show. 8 out of 10 times the images hanging on the wall are boring and nothing but gimicks like one side of the frame out of focus or a pile of rubble in the center of the frame. It seems as though it all about a fluffed up artist statement with some deep meaning that only they would understand if they were stoned. It's academic rubish that could'nt stand on it's own two legs. I guess it's intelectual art that I could'nt possibly understand because I don't have an MFA.


http://www.photo.net/photos/X-Ray

 

[telenous]

I do not know if the premise that photography as 'art' is falling out of favour is true or false - I 'll take Bill Mattock's word and consider it false. If that's a premise and is false then the argument is at best valid but unsound. If it's a conclusion and false then the argument is both invalid and unsound (and that's much worse because it could never stand logically no matter what).

I instinctively agree with Smee that we are culturally saturated with images and then with Xray that young photographers (seem to) have lost the skill of composition compensating for it with Photoshop aptitude (just check the images on flickr). The net result seems to me to be that people that used to admire photography as a form of expression combining photographic skill and inspiration now only look at it as the byproduct of computer manipulation. The umbilical cord between photography and reality has been shuttered and as a result the ability of photography to comment, however subjectively, on aspects of life is henceforth cast in doubt.

 

[x-ray]

At what point does photography stop being photography and it becomes computer illustration?

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I intended to comment on process, not media, sorry if anyone took that for a "film vs. digital" comment. To clarify: the same people who blast away with a digital camera would likely blast away with an auto-everything film camera. Either way, same result.

It's ok. Words trigger people just like a Google search. Reading can be hard. I do it. And it's at this point that we get derailed.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

At what point does photography stop being photography and it becomes computer illustration?

FD 10
LT 90
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😉

 

[x-ray]

I'm beginning to think that the masters like HCB, W. Eugene Smith, Dorthia Lange, Edward Weston, Imogene Cunningham and Ansel Adams would not be recognized for their art. None of them were MFA's or had a gimick. Im their time it was all about pure photography.

 

[kmack]

At what point does photography stop being photography and it becomes computer illustration?

Does it matter?

If the object of the exercise is to provide a pictorial account of events as they happened then the manipulation of the image to enhance dramatic or artistic effect is unethical.

The computer is now the tool to manipulate images. Controlling contrast and tone with filters, developer, paper combinations is in the process of being replaced with computer software. I don't see it as good or bad, it is just different.

Certain skill sets will be lost, or practiced only by a few. Very few people mix their own inks these days. The market for vellum and parchment is very small. Is that good or bad? (BTW: it think that iron-gall inks on vellum is one of the most beautiful forms of printing that has ever been invented.)

I do not think the tool devalues the work.

Photography can be art, it does not matter how it is derived.
Junk will always be junk, not matter how it was derived.

 

[Socke]

Is a handcoloured picture from the 1890s art? Is a handcoloured picture from the 1960s art?
In the last case, the german tax authorities thought so since they taxed my fathers work with the reduced VAT rate for art.
And they stuck to that when my father started to use computers in the late 1980s.

 

[kmack]

I'm beginning to think that the masters like HCB, W. Eugene Smith, Dorthia Lange, Edward Weston, Imogene Cunningham and Ansel Adams would not be recognized for their art. None of them were MFA's or had a gimick. Im their time it was all about pure photography.

First, I am sorry I am being so verbose on this subject but I am taking a break from working in the garden and am feeling very philosophical today. Working in the dirt, watching things grow, deciding which plants live which ones die, that sort of thing.

I think that the people you mention would still be considered masters. They all had a combination of technical skill, talent and personality that transcend other factors. It never is about pure anything.

Artistic success is as much about association as it is about skill and talent. The MFA thing is short sighted gallery types who prefer not to think. The only way to crack that wall is to either be pulled up from the top or pushed up from the bottom.

 

[John Camp]

Rule of thumb: when it comes to art, 99.999 percent is crap. When you have a great artist (Van Gogh), 75 percent is still crap. The problem is, you can't sort it out at the time -- but time will sort it out. The thing about photography is that the basic function (pushing a button) combined with lying ("That's what I intended to do, because that's my personal vision, and my personal vision is as good as yours, or are you a facsist?") make "art" possible to anyone. A really crappy painting is easier to detect. A guy goes and stands in the middle of the sidewalk on 5th & 67th and rips off fifty photos, prints them, says, "Gary Winogrand is my hero," and it takes a while to figure out that he's a b.s. artist, not another Gary Winogrand. A while, but not too long. I sometimes think that a lot of the animus toward this kind of thing is that people see hustlers taking over a function (the production of art) that they value. That's pretty understandable...

At the other end of the scale, of course, are the insistent techicians who claim that you can't make a decent photo unless you can recite the DOF scale for each of your lenses, from memory, and that the process of achieving a photograph be as difficult and esoteric as possible. They're not as bad as the pure hustlers, because at least they can actually *do* something...at least most of the time.

Digital, film, makes no difference. The difference is in the image, and b.s. will become apparent...in time.

JC

 

[back alley]

but really...what is art?

😉

 

[kmack]

but really...what is art?

😉

Oh yes, BS it a real art, practiced by may, mastered by few 🙂

 

[trittium]

Art can be anything intended for art sake. This idea was clearly made evident by Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. Really it is just a urinal, but Duchamp saw something in it, and called it art.

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jconte/Images/Duchamp_Fountain.jpg

 

[BrianShaw]

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. Really it is just a urinal.

You are SO right... it's just a urinal!

 

[peterc]

but really...what is art?

Art is whatever someone will pay money for so that they can display it. It becomes great art when other people also want it and offer more money.

Peter

 

[BrianShaw]

Food can be art. It is not displayed. It is eaten and enjoyed. I think ENJOYMENT is the defining attribute of art, not the money that may or may-not be associated with it.

Art, like pornography, is something you know when you see it... but we might not all see it the same.

 

[trittium]

Art is whatever someone will pay money for so that they can display it. It becomes great art when other people also want it and offer more money.

Peter

The price of something does not make it art. The monetary value may be a reflection of it's quality if it is displayed to people who appreciate it.

If a painter paints a painting, but never sells it, is it still art?

 

[BrianShaw]

If a painter paints a painting, but never sells it, is it still art?

Oh, my... this is a difficult question. let me do a Google search and see if there is a correct answer 😉

 

[trittium]

Food can be art. It is not displayed. It is eaten and enjoyed. I think ENJOYMENT is the defining attribute of art, not the money that may or may-not be associated with it.

I think this is on track, but some art is not ment to elicit enjoyment. Some is made to be thought provoking and cause a questioning of society, some is ment to make you feel unconfortable, and some is ment to make you cry. Art is made to cause an emotion, makes you react, or think. Good art appeals to a wide range of people, so that everyone can be stirrred by it.