Poll: can photography be art?

Not art because the creator said so.

ok, but that is just an opinion.

Someone doesn't have to make the scene to create art from it, regardless of whether the art is a painting, drawing, photograph etc.

you can be creative and execute your ideas well, but the final image is not art. Its just a great photo.
these are a single image not a composite. Shot out of camera in my studio.

Again that is just an opinion because what is art is subjective and people can decide for themselves if they see an image as art or not.

I can't tell you or anyone else what is art and what isn't any more than you or any one else can tell me what is art and what isn't.

It really is as simple as that 😀

Great shot! I'm surprised nobody has asked if that sun should be square?

Oh good grief...painfully obvious, but poorly questioned. Ask if photographers ARE a pedantic pretentious lot?

Let's consider a related question. Is painting art? For a great many centuries, painting was seen as a skill, a craft, but not an art. Especially before photography, painting was often an exercise in skill trying to attain a sense of realism. I am also a painter with about 10 years of part time experience. I see a great many others in my experience level, who are also striving for realism. General viewers are often also impressed with the skills that can be developed in generating realistic paintings. Personally, I am not that impressed and consider that approach to be highly technical and minimally artistic.

I also find it interesting that many photographers move towards pictorialism and especially digital manipulation. A photoshop slider is all it takes to bump up saturation to an extreme degree. There is a plug in for virtually any permutation imaginable including the one click oil painting filter. To each their own, but I am not impressed with that approach.

agree. art was invented for those who spent a lot of time on a project and it still looked like a train smash. we had a guy give a talk on street photography last week at our photography club. all he kept saying is how amazing all these famous street photographers where . so i asked politely what was so amazing about a certain piece of work. and he had no idea how to answer the question. i then proceeded to ask why he wasnt showing his work, and at the end of the talk it was obvious why he didnt.

I agree with your first premise: some painting/drawing is more technical than artistic expertise. Hyperrealism in painting/sketching is definitely a skill but often it does not resonate as especially creative. It seems that representional products may fall along a continuum ranging from highly technical to highly artistic?

I don't share your dislike of pictorialism and/or digital manipulation. Indeed, I think the early pictorialists - Stieglitz, Steichen, Cameron and my own favorite Clarence White did much to move photography into the realm of art as opposed to strict representation. In currently working photographers, I think of Jack Spencer as an artist in this category. While I don't personally care for single button-push use of sliders, plugins, filters and such, I think any tool that is out there is fair game for use in artistic interpretations as long as we are honest about what we do. My own photographic products range from SOOC to complex composites and digital paintings, some of which involved use of a variety of digital manipulation tools, applied with brushes and masks for particular effects. Careful use of tools is a good idea in almost any endeavor.

This is a hyper-realistic image by Dru-Blair, but it's of a scene that never actually existed. What about that?

Some people will see that image as art, some won't but because it is a depiction of what someone imagined then it could be justifiably argued that it is art.

But any attempt to make a wide sweeping generalisation based on a single or only a few images is ludicrous 🙂

I am not sure about the "hyper-realistic" aspect. If hyper-realistic, I certainly don't understand the intense vertical banding.

Anyway, regarding the issue of "art", I am not sure I understand the makers intent aside from the technical aspect. What is it the maker wanted to communicate to the viewer? Is there some sort of aesthetic, emotional, or content the maker wanted to convey?

When it comes to craft vs art, I don't think there will ever be a dividing line. Rather it seems there is a spectrum from the technical, snapshot, depiction side to the highly creative side where the maker has effectively conveyed some sort of aesthetic, emotional, intellectual content.

Then there is the question of competency in the endeavor. Either the craft or fine art aspects or both can be diminished or lost due to poor execution.

Finally there is the matter of individual preferences. As I mentioned I don't like attempts at hyperrealism in painting or pictorialism/digital manipulation in photography. Those are entirely subjective and are my preferences. When it comes to hyperrealism in painting, I tend to consider that on the craft/technical side of the spectrum, regardless of whether or not I like it. When it comes to pictorialism or digital manipulation, that can involve a mouse click or great technical skill. Neither of which mean much to me. Instead, I want to understand the artistic intent.

To my thinking a picture of a helicopter stirring up spray would be pretty far to the non-art side of the spectrum. Creating that from scratch would certainly involve more skill but does not move the result any closer to being art. Climbing up the side of a mountain doesn't make the image more artistic than if it was taken from a drone.

That's so obvious to me that I suspect those words mean something entirely different to you than to me.

I would not put photography at the level of sculpture or painting as an art form, but many photographs can be "artistic".

Agreed. Art is communication. What it communicates (or even whether it communicates at all) therefore varies from person to person because all communication also depends on the subjective experience that the receiver brings to the communication. The original purpose of the item may or may not have been to create art. I thought that this question had been answered by Duchamps and his "Fountain" exhibit back in 1917.

Um....YOU did with your film noir set.....LOL. My reference to it swung Lee Jay a bit to admitting some photography can be art.

I've always said it could be art if you build the scene. Whether it can be art if you don't, but heavily mess with the scene? Not sure. I'm not comfortable saying it's only art if you think it's aesthetically pleasing.

My portfolio sets are no where near as good as these. I don't make use of hardly any props and these look really professional 😲

San x