You can never satisfy everyone... and one person's "bad" photo is another person's "good" photo. The problem comes when you try to deduce photography to a purely technical adventure.
What makes a bad picture a Fine Art Photograph?
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sevo
Fokutorendaburando
Well, that is already the initial fallacy, discussing the rest is pointless. There doubtlessly is a customer base for wedding photography that agrees upon its quality or excellence, but the same goes for the fine art market. There are no objective criteria for the quality of a picture one way or another.
RichL
Well-known
Poor snapshots become fine art via good PR (think Andy Warhol 🙂
Sparrow
Veteran
Not to mention dear old Henri's work, good publisher in his case
Instantclassic
Hans
Sharp is art, blur and low contrast is not.
Good composition is art, bad ditto is not.
Eh?
Some kind of rationality can be derived from the statements above but I have yet to see THE explanation about objektive art.
Good luck! And please check the debate since Plato, Aristotele, Longinus, Horatius, Baumgarten, Kant, Hegel, Gadamer and Dickie (and why not Bourdieu) before you lose yourself in the postmodern swamp of relativity.
Good composition is art, bad ditto is not.
Eh?
Some kind of rationality can be derived from the statements above but I have yet to see THE explanation about objektive art.
Good luck! And please check the debate since Plato, Aristotele, Longinus, Horatius, Baumgarten, Kant, Hegel, Gadamer and Dickie (and why not Bourdieu) before you lose yourself in the postmodern swamp of relativity.
mfogiel
Veteran
The answer is simple: the price.
PKR
Veteran
I knew a photographer who's work Warhol "borrowed". They came to terms after Warhol confessed to lifting the work from a published photo book. The photographer got a couple of large serigraphs in payment for the usage.
johnnygulliver
Established
PKR
Veteran
As I recall the prints were really big and worth $100K before Warhol died. This guy was quite successful and likely still has them.
wolfpeterson
Established
I think one thing that has to be said about "fine art photography" is that it should not be judged completely on technical merit. That said, good and bad photograph disappear and leaves room for successful or unsuccessful.
You need to ask yourself why the artist chose to make the print so dark or so contrasty that all you see is grain. You must know that everything in the artwork is intentional: in the technique, the subject matter, medium, etc. You see the product of the artist's intent, and then you might begin to see the concept, idea or intent. If I don't, then I consider the work unsuccessful.
But then again, that's just me. Other people may see another intent, depending on their background, mood or even what they had for breakfast!
You see, I've tried to elucidate what can be objective in art and I've failed. 😛
You need to ask yourself why the artist chose to make the print so dark or so contrasty that all you see is grain. You must know that everything in the artwork is intentional: in the technique, the subject matter, medium, etc. You see the product of the artist's intent, and then you might begin to see the concept, idea or intent. If I don't, then I consider the work unsuccessful.
But then again, that's just me. Other people may see another intent, depending on their background, mood or even what they had for breakfast!
You see, I've tried to elucidate what can be objective in art and I've failed. 😛
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Roger Hicks
Veteran
Hence the old observation that a work of art needs two people: an artist to create it, and someone to kill him when it's finished. It's all too easy to become obsessed with something and to take it to to a point where no-one else gets it. You may then see why someone did something, and still regard it as unsuccessful: as recto-cranial inversion on their part.
Cheers,
R.
wolfpeterson
Established
Sorry, I made a typo that affects the whole interpretation 😀
It should say: "You need to ask yourself why the artist chose to make the print so dark or so contrasty that all you see is grain."
I will ammend and proofread in the future.
jbr
Established
Many painters of the Impressionist era had studied 'Fine Arts' and were capable of producing superb realistic, natural paintings. They knew their craft and they knew how to use their tools. They understood composition, light and shadow and how colours interact.
When they joined the Impressionist movement (or better, developed into it), it was because they felt that 'realism' was not capable of expressing their feelings and emotions adequately. So their craftmanship allowed them to use their available tools to evolve into the next artistic level. It took a long time until the ridiculisation of the impressionist movement subsided.
2010: if you can't even take a decent 'normal' photo, forget 'Fine Art'.
When they joined the Impressionist movement (or better, developed into it), it was because they felt that 'realism' was not capable of expressing their feelings and emotions adequately. So their craftmanship allowed them to use their available tools to evolve into the next artistic level. It took a long time until the ridiculisation of the impressionist movement subsided.
2010: if you can't even take a decent 'normal' photo, forget 'Fine Art'.
jbr
Established
😀 I couldn't resist.... here are some of my chimpanzee photos 😀
The funny thing is, that most people LOVE them, because of the 'artistic' aura surrounding (especially grainy) black-and-white and shallow DOF photographs. So they all regard me as a Fine Artist :angel:....
(Summicron-C 2/40 on M8)
AgentX
Well-known
And, of course, it was photography that led painters down the road to impressionism, expressionism, abstraction, and the rest since photography freed painting and other visual arts from the burden of realistic representation.
And a bunch of old painters sat around and said, "What are these smeary crappy paintings of water lillies?? A chimpanzee could have painted them! They must be worthless."
gp-ak
Member
You should read, or re-read Camera Lucida if your going to complain about semiotics and photography. Barthes would enjoy your dislike as much as your appreciated of photographs.
Peter R
Established
I actually did a three year undergrad degree and a postgrad year of art theory & history, and worked inside the modern art world. I'm reasonably au fait with the theory from Ruskin to Derrida.
The reality is that there is a lot of stuff out there that is as banal and bereft of intellectual intent as it looks, and plenty of rationales written by people who know the form but not the meaning of their words.
It can be hugely entertaining if you're willing to take a lighthearted view, and frequently deeply disappointing if you honestly believed there's a deeper intellectual statement behind everything on show. Turns out, sometimes a cigar just is a cigar. 😉
Z
zumbido
Guest
This notion is popular but I've not seen a convincing argument for it. It was really only since the Renaissance, and accelerating after the Enlightenment, that art "had to be" figurative. Thanks to the slavish devotion, in certain high places, to "classicism". Even then there was plenty of non-figurative and non-"linear" art, but it was called "decoration" or "the scribblings of the mad" 😉 to keep it separate from REAL ART.
I think, if the notion has any merit at all, a more accurate version would be something like:
"It was photography that gave wealthy patrons something other than portrait paintings to spend money on, and so non-figurative arts eventually became accepted again via the same (petite) bourgeoisie who had managed to sort of suppress them for a couple hundred years."
semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
That is abject nonsense.
Breaking convention is one of many roads to creativity. Another, equally valid, is to do outstanding work within an existing tradition. And breaking convention per se gets you nowhere (beyond being an unconventional bore). You still have to do good work.
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semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
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