What makes a bad picture a Fine Art Photograph?

[PKR]

PKR...I would really like to discuss this more with you sometime. Really interested into the "inside" of the industry. I had a difficult time reconciling that attitudes of the auction house industry years ago when I work in it...maybe you can explain a few things.

J.D.

I left an email address on the "contact" portion of your web page.
p.

 

[jamesdfloyd]

Wolf...nice work.

To me this is Art because, without regard to the message you where conveying, it shows to me that you had intent and a concept in making these images. My analogy about a chimpanzee taking a picture deals with something that looks like an accident - that is the "Fine Art" I do not understand.

 

[John Robertson]

Probably the same thing that makes Tracey Emin's My Bed "art", and my own unmade bed, just an unmade bed.

Its the "kings new clothes syndrome"😡
no one has the courage to say "its crap!!" in case they look uncool.

 

[Jamie123]

I'd say the main difference between wedding photographs and those fine art chimpanzee snapshots is that the latter usually have (or at least are supposed to have) a conceptual basis that goes beyond ''this is pretty''. The problem is that most of the times the conceptual basis is ''look at my dirty, bisexual hipster friends fooling around and aiming their genitalia at the camera".

 

[jamesdfloyd]

PKR...I seem to be having trouble with my site's e-mail. Please try jdf.foto at gmail

Thanks,

JD

 

[jamesdfloyd]

Jamie123...to use fine art chimpanzee parlance...I am laughing my @&* off over that one.

 

[robklurfield]

It's probably axiomatic that people won't pay for out-of-focus wedding pictures. Beyond that truism, there are no rules and everything is subjective. A "bad" wedding picture might be strong art.

 

[robklurfield]

or, to quote, the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, "I know it when I see it." Of course, that was in his court opinion on pornography (and possibly on the artwork of Jamie123's friends (that was a hoot to read)).

 

[benlees]

Wolf...nice work.

To me this is Art because, without regard to the message you where conveying, it shows to me that you had intent and a concept in making these images. My analogy about a chimpanzee taking a picture deals with something that looks like an accident - that is the "Fine Art" I do not understand.

It may look like an accident but probably it wasn't. Intent is usually there but it may require a bit of effort. "Breaking the rules" is a long tradition in art: Duchamp, Picasso, more recently with photography, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, and Lee Friedlander. They want people to be confused. They want to show there are many contexts for pictures. A picture of a pole coming through someones head is their way of saying, "Hey, look around you; there are lots of ways to do things!" Obviously, there is a lot more to it than this. It is worth looking in to because it is interesting.

"Anyone can do this" is obviously true except people don't do it. So it is not true. 🙂

 

[jamesdfloyd]

Rob...I am amazed it took 2-hours to get the Justice Stewart comment.

After I read Jamie123's comment, I have been running that image though my mind. Started remembering similar images I've seen posted online.

 

[robklurfield]

Probably, some of friends who might otherwise have quoted Justice Stewart on "prurient interest" are busy watching football.

Rob...I am amazed it took 2-hours to get the Justice Stewart comment.

After I read Jamie123's comment, I have been running that image though my mind. Started remembering similar images I've seen posted online.

 

[Vilk]

a dozen more similar bad pictures. then it's called style

 

[Ducky]

Wolf. I havn't seen a piece of slot car track in years.

J.D., Critics and the market place, I think, determine what art is. And, as in the case of Ms. Arbus and others, their estates.

 

[peterm1]

Sadly I agree, well to some extent anyway. Although my grounds for concern are diffferent. I often look through "fine art" photography magazines on the shelves and am more often than not shocked, not by the technique some much as by the subjects. Somehow or other these subjects are supposed to be "relevant" (Whatever that means - God spare me from strangling every 3rd rate aspiring artisit who uses that damn term.)

Photos of pieces of garbage laying on the pavement, or rusting metal in an old factory, or old people sitting in dirty unkempt rooms and such. Often accurately exposed with crisp color.

But the subjects! And the composition!

Often the difference between a good photo and an indifferent one is composition.

But many of these efforts (all published with a straight face by magazines looking for an audience of buyers) show little or no "flare" or artictic interpretation. They are just indifferent (in the sense of being boring) documentary photos with little artistic merit. The subject matter seems to have been chosen to shock as much as anything. Well I suppose in that case they are successful - but not in the manner intended by the "artist". But in that sense these photos also remind me of some other modern art. A pile of bricks in a rectangle on the floor of an otherwise empty room in an art gallery is one I recall. OK!!!!!!!!!!! now that shows artistic merit. (NOT)

So, not my taste at all.

While on the subject, here is one of mine that I think is not a bad effort at fine art mainly due to the composition. (An otherwise very boring subject.) But even though its mine, whenever I look at it I have to laugh.

It reminds me of a quote from Stewie in Family Guy....

"Oh, that is SO lame. Every hot girl who can aim a camera thinks she's a photographer. Oooh, you took a black and white picture of a lawn chair and its shadow and developed it at Save-On; you must be brooding and deep."

PS I am not a "hot girl" but I may be a "chimpanzee."

 

[atlcruiser]

Thats easy!

If the photographer calls him or her self a "fine art photographer" then it must be fine art. If the viewer does not see it as fine art then the viewer is wrong as the artist has declared themselves "fine art photographers."















🙂 I could not resist

 

[zumbido]

Again? Again.

 

[PKR]

LOL - fine art photography can be achieved by taking bad photographs and adding a pretentious artist statements and verbose pseudo intellectual meanderings that profess to go where nobody has been before (while ignoring the fact that lots of people have been there with far more insightful literature and fantastic images but have omitted to combine pitiful examples of both). I also recommend using the word 'semiotics' a lot to explain why your 'human factor' photos look cr_p, while (here is the clever bit) turning such drivel into work that is evidently beyond anyone who dares to question it.

OK, so I am biased, but I think *some* fine art photography is often so subjective that the only thing that truly turns some examples from garbage to masterpiece is very often the mind games being played by artist and audience and who chickens out first. Its true emperor's clothes stuff where you will get more than you bargained for if you dare to call anyone's bluff. That ranges from the Michael Smith genre of boring LF photographs to the more contemporary work. You just are not smart enough, OK?

It's very common to describe "art" that isn't easily understandable as "beyond the "scope" of the "common" viewer". Now, a claim of understanding such work, makes you "special". It's marketing.

 

[David R Munson]

A call-out - can those of you decrying "fine art" provide specific examples? For example, can the OP provide examples of the work in the magazine that was so bad?

 

[Neare]

Hey, but the pictures you saw were in a magazine at least right? 🙂
Someone liked them.

 

[flip]

blur, convincing claims of intention, a grant.... The list goes on.