Why I dislike photography as art.

Dear Teddy,

Then why didn't you?

Cheers,

R.

Mmm? Many reasons perhaps. Connections - who you know. Reputation and demand. I'm not a professional. I don't intend to earn money from photography and force my style and photographic ideas. No one impels me to create photographs in that manner. I used to be a graphics designer for 12 years, and still do some work, but I got fed up with many of the commercial forces that trumped my own creativity. I have tried to capture very "abstract" photos like this one: https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3775/13688399583_3d632e31f9_b.jpg
It's a crappy photo, but I like the reds on the pillar. That's why I took it.
But I reject to call it art in any way. Not quite sure what your question is?
 
Exactly!!!
If art exists, photography can be art sometimes, as with other crafts...
Cheers,
Juan

Yeah, its one of those controversial topics hey. Well Fine Art Photography thrills me also because some of it is influenced by artistic styles harnessed from centuries ago like classical, impressionist, romanticism, cubism and what have you. All of these styles can be identified on many images created by painters and even sculptures. That is why I like stuff from Steichen.
 
If art is anything, it must be this : the most perfect, most elegant, most beautiful job well done. Fine craftsmanship forged in years of repeatedly trying to do better, until it becomes seemingly effortless.

Well said! That is it.
 
Totally sounds like craft, and not like art...
If we think of the most influential visual artist at a world level in the last 100 years, that would possibly be Picasso, and he was never after any traditional perfection, elegance or beauty...
Cheers,
Juan

Now, I find this extremely controversial! ;) Time to start another thread about this one.
 
Well, Picasso did have a long, and even moderately successful career before he invented cubism. If I remember well, he even was a bit of a child prodigy.

And frankly, that is entirely my point : Picasso's work is craft, his genius is that he moulded African art (well, yes : craft) into the European canon, and then he became a hero and nobody really knows what for.

ART is about names, heroes, geniuses found by curators who relentlessly sniff out new talent, it is about high volume sales and great brand value.

Being an artist is just craftsmanship. Wether it be Picasso, HCB, or Rembrandt. The Holy Halo of Heroism that shines around the head of the Artist is only a construct of the public.

If one day money is taken away from the equation, then perhaps we could change our point of view of real art and true artists with real honour?
 
Funny, I was just reading this at www.americansuburbx.com some interesting pictures there...

“There are two ways of looking at a thing. Either you feel that a thing must be perfect before you present it to the public, or you are willing to let it go out even knowing that it is not perfect, because you are striving for something even beyond what you have achieved, but in struggling too hard for perfection you know that you may lose the very glimmer of life, the very spirit of the thing that you also know exists at a particular point in what you have done; and that to interfere with it would be to destroy that very living quality.

I am myself always in favor of practicing in public. There are, of course, those people who say, ‘But the public is not interested in watching people practice. It wants the finished thing or nothing.’ My answer is that if one does not practice in public in reality, then in nine cases out of ten the world will never see the finished product of one’s work. Some people go on the assumption that if a thing is not a hundred percent perfect it should not be given to the world, but I have seen too many things that were a hundred percent perfect that were spiritually dead, and then things that have life and vitality, which I prefer by far to the other so-called perfect thing."

-Alfred Stieglitz quoted by Dorothy Norman from American and Alfred Stieglitz, page 136-137.

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2012...-kentucky-motivation-sex-and-diane-arbus.html
 
Mmm? Many reasons perhaps. Connections - who you know. Reputation and demand. I'm not a professional. I don't intend to earn money from photography and force my style and photographic ideas. . . .
In other words, you lack the drive. There's nothing wrong with that. I have only a modest amount of drive myself. But I know photographers (and other kinds of artists) for whom producing their art is all that matters. I know how hard they work at it. Everything else is subordinated to it: relationships, income, accommodation... That's how I know it is meaningless to say, "I could have done that."

It is legitimate to say, "I might have been able to do that", but "could"? No. Either you do something, or you don't. Pretending you could is, well, just pretending. You might as well pretend to be Superman.

Cheers,

R.
 
Originally Posted by lukitas
Well, Picasso did have a long, and even moderately successful career before he invented cubism. If I remember well, he even was a bit of a child prodigy.

And frankly, that is entirely my point : Picasso's work is craft, his genius is that he moulded African art (well, yes : craft) into the European canon, and then he became a hero and nobody really knows what for.

ART is about names, heroes, geniuses found by curators who relentlessly sniff out new talent, it is about high volume sales and great brand value.

Being an artist is just craftsmanship. Wether it be Picasso, HCB, or Rembrandt. The Holy Halo of Heroism that shines around the head of the Artist is only a construct of the public
.

Actually Picasso had no work in the first (cubist) exhibition in 1911, and of the half dozen artists who did exhibit I can only recall Metzinger had some work in it, and I recon to know this stuff; Metzinger came from a neo-impressionist roots

Which leads me to the conclusion that to be an artist is one thing, whereas being a recognised artist requires one to be a self publicist, people only remember the egos for the first 200 years, its only then they get assessed properly ...
 
You might as well pretend to be Superman.

Indeed. Then again, it's all ego, in any case.

Why else is it so difficult to accept that different people like different things? All "art" is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, just as all "wisdom" is in the ear of the listener.

Next, I shall prove that the universe is contained within the egg of a one legged flea...

:D
 
Indeed. Then again, it's all ego, in any case.

Why else is it so difficult to accept that different people like different things? All "art" is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, just as all "wisdom" is in the ear of the listener.

Next, I shall prove that the universe is contained within the egg of a one legged flea...

:D

nope ... on the back of a giant turtle
 
. . . Now "maybe" I'll make an exception to prove the rule.
Dear Nick,

You do know, I take it, what this means? That "prove" is used in the same context as "proving" a gun barrel, testing it to make sure it doesn't fail when tested?

If there are exceptions, it may be a more or less sloppy rule of thumb, but you can't actually call it an infrangible rule.

Cheers,

R.
 
... But, then, it's hard to find any photography forum that has intelligent, or even interesting, discussion of art. I've got to remember to stop trying to participate in these threads.

MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD

Mitch, art is a human activity, and it's not particle physics - it is intended to be shared with others, and you do not need a college education to produce art, receive it, or comment on it. I did not think much of the images featured in the article the OP pointed to - I am sure the work was sincere in it's creation, but the commentary was precious. If you didn't think it read like a parody, then your education must have obliterated your sense of humor.


In the end, I am happy that the guy made the picture of the two blue plastic pails, and the lady made the posed, boring images with the dour teenage girls, and that some sappy commentator wrote some blather to prop the work up. Creating trumps not creating, whether or not anyone appreciates what you have done, and even if it becomes attached to sophomoric discourse.
 
In other words, you lack the drive. There's nothing wrong with that. I have only a modest amount of drive myself. But I know photographers (and other kinds of artists) for whom producing their art is all that matters. I know how hard they work at it. Everything else is subordinated to it: relationships, income, accommodation... That's how I know it is meaningless to say, "I could have done that."

It is legitimate to say, "I might have been able to do that", but "could"? No. Either you do something, or you don't. Pretending you could is, well, just pretending. You might as well pretend to be Superman.

Cheers,

R.

Good description of an artist there.
 
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