Can photography be art?

Good one, Andy.

I'm not worried what a dictionary says is art, it's something that I decide what art is to me. I've seen a lot of photographers call themselves artists and even along the lines of, "oh I take fine art". 🙂

Some like the term artist, but personally I like to see it as, we are all just mere clickers in time passing through.

Put simply, I know what art is to me when I see it.

Danny.

“Must a name mean something?” Alice asks Humpty Dumpty, only to get this answer: “When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

Jim, I can just see your artwork in one of those fancy stores on Fifth Avenue.
Next thing, you’ll be moving out to The Hamptons.

oh… you will have to wear a beret, and smoke French cigarettes. lol

Last month I was in the National Gallery in London. Amongst lots of other paintings, I admired the "Vergine delle Rocce". Just after Christmas I enjoyed the "I mesi dell’Antelami" a wonderfully moving set of sculptures, housed in the Battistero di Parma an architectural masterpiece. I have a well worn a monograph, with the photographs of André Kertész, that always cheers me up when I am feeling in a bad mood. Is all this stuff just marketing bullshit?

Or is the art I mentioned above , including the photographs of Kertez art because the works speak to us and move our spirit. Or is all art just marketing bullshit?

Two reasons.

Every art that I can think of involves taking something from the mind and senses of the artist, and using their hands (or feet, or whatever body parts) to put that information to media. Painting, sculpting, writing music, music performance, dance, literature, play writing, acting, whatever. I can't think of a single art form that uses technology to capture something already there rather than the mind and body of the artist. Except photography.

I take myself as an example. I generally consider myself as having only a bare spec of artistic talent. Maybe not even that. And yet, I've captured many images that are well-liked by the people for whom they were captured. So, to me, if someone with no artistic talent can do something with a decent level of performance, that something is not an art.

I also think it's a little silly to defend photography as an art. Why? Does that change the activity in some way? I don't see why anyone cares if it's an art or not. It's just a word defining a category. So why are photographers, specifically, so defensive about photography being an "art"? Personally, I'd rather it be in a category by itself instead of being lumped in with "dance"!

What about industrial design? In a way it can just be seen as packaging a product, but there appear to be museums for it that treat it as art.

Hifi should be about sound, not looks, but looks still seem important. I'd like one of these old classics even though I have no practical use for it, because it looks elegant. Well composed. That's art enough for me...

Source: chorltonanalogue.com/products/quad-34-late-charcoal-grey-preamplifier?variant=39947474829394

Because people like you get so offended about photography being called a form of art?

Only thing that is silly is going out of one's way to single out photography as not being art and then being surprised when people respond to defend photography as an art.

Maybe you underestimate yourself? For every marketing genius falsely marketing themselves as "an artist", there are a load more who deny it to themselves. It does feel a little cringe worthy to describe yourself as an artist. Some people get over it.

There are also a lot of photographs taken these days. Most are made without a shred of artistic intent. But you can tell instantly when you see someone else's shot that looks like art to you. So why not accept that someone, somewhere sees your work and considers it art rather than just mechanical record work.

Everyone has their own taste, this may not work for you, but this is art to me and not many people at the same location would make this. It takes a certain internal mental organisation to see a landscape this way, cut through the prettiness to the essence of shape and form. It doesn't happen mechanically:

brucepercy.co.uk/21-18#/fjallabak-2019/

I believe photography is a means to produce art. I've seen lots of photographic work that I as viewer consider art, and that is considered art by folks far more expert than I am. Some of it I thought was excellent art. Some of it I didn't, but that doesn't mean someone else won't find meaning or emotion in it and consider it differently. I've also seen photographic work of other kinds: advertising, documentation, identification, journalism etc, that I don't think of as art.

I make some images that I consider art and others (mostly) not. The keepsake snaps I took at my 7 year old grandson's baseball game last night are not art. But the image I made of him in his battered catcher's gear in a cloud of dust, with background blurred, converted to sepia, printed on Hahnemuhle German Etching paper and nicely framed -it's more than a capture; it is a product and it is my belief that the product is art. I won't declare it to be great art, and it certainly isn't famous, but it conveys something more than a simple documentation.

There is a dispute in my state about what photography is. The state arts commission believes it to be primarily a craft. The state crafts guild insists it is art. So photographers are sort of homeless creatives.

I had one of those for many years, and Quad certainly were good at the art of reproducing recorded music.

Does that elevate it somehow? As a general rule, I consider accurate documentation to be way above "art" on the importance scale.

The second part of your sentence is the fallacy of appeal to authority. Just because an expert says it's so doesn't make it so.

What if the mind and senses used their hands and feet to actually create the scene that is documented with photography? Is building the scene art, but not the act of documenting it? Genres like Donald's recent posts of film noir pics come to mind. How about in post processing someones mind and senses change the image entirely from what was recorded. Is mastering Photoshop the art if the photograph wasn't?

I have no stake in it, and there are no right or wrong answers.

Most art forms use technology to capture "something from the mind and senses of the artist." Examples of technology used: instruments, paints, lighting, amplifiers, computers, typewriters, and cameras. Using technology has always been an intrinsic part of art, starting with using the tools in the cave paintings.

I think it is silly to claim that photography is not art.
Of course, not all photographs are art. The fact that other people like my photographs do not make them art.

I do believe set building (for example) can be art. Your definition above makes sense to me.

I know someone who paints (digitally) from pictures. I consider that art. Probably not post-processing.

That it's not "art" doesn't mean there's not a creative or aesthetic portion to the activity.

Potatoes are more important than art, but it doesn't mean art isn't important. I think you get into trouble as soon as you start trying to rank the importance of things. I don't personally have any pretensions about "art" at all. I don't need someone to tell me whether something counts as art, that's up to me. But I have a good idea about what things I want to hang on my wall.

Here's a little portfolio that I keep a link to. It continues to amaze me how a photographer can turn the mundane into an art form

www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/elegance/bicycle/

It's beautiful, isn't it?

Pretty sure that portfolio would get you an ARPS.

I didn't say art couldn't use tools, just not tools to capture something already there. A sculptor using a hammer is fine. Using a 3D-printer to create a 3D shape from an existing formula (i.e. sphere, Mobius strip, whatever) is not.

I've never seen a photograph that I would classify as art.