i don't know, if photography is art...

[Pablito]

Originally Posted by pakeha

Would you have preferred he started another bag thread?

yes, absolutely. or a strap thread. or an airport x-ray thread.

[gb hill]

Originally Posted by Peter_wrote:

i don't know, if photography is art. but when it is art, it is a lousy one.

So you don't like William Eggleston's transfer dye process to achieving the texture & color he wanted to be seen in his photographs? Over 90% of the Art is what is done after the shot is taken.

[NaChase]

*cough* pretentious *cough*

[Peter_wrote:]

oh, this thread is still going...

some interesting thoughts here anyway.

have not so much time now to comment everything. just came from work, have a meal now, and have to go outside then to shoot a roll of film, as i joined the 7 days a roll of film challenge here on rff.

Originally Posted by jordanstarr

... people should read Crisis Of The Real and other great books (that as pointed out already) that have tackled the issue of "photography as art". The philosophy of art and photography won't be summed up in 400 pages on RFF.
I

completely agree. i don't think either, that it would make sense to define art in a forum. better read some theoretical stuff for that purpose. thanks for the reading tip by the way. i will have a look.

but besides that it is interesting to hear just the personal view of different people. so no objective definition of art or photography, just their personal approach to it. socialising, doing some smalltalk...


i enjoy photography and i am interested into it. but for me it is just not the same as literature, music or painting e.g.
i like it because it is very personal and impulsive, but maybe this strength is also its weakness. it has some other kind of quality than a painting or a novel. not meant to be judgmental
just my personal view.

[CameraQuest]

Originally Posted by Peter_wrote:

i don't know, if photography is art. but when it is art, it is a lousy one.

i just wanted to mention that.



sorry.
i didn't wanted to be the party pooper.

sounds like you are well acquainted with your own work.
well done.

beauty, like art, is in the eye of the beholder.

Stephen

[redisburning]

OP I'll be honest with you, but with the caveat that this comment has nothing to do with your pictures (which I did look through on Flickr) but with what you've said in this thread.

I feel like your understanding of what is or isn't art is immature.

If you are so concerned with message or "telling a story" in your photographs, by all means continue doing what you are. I however, consider that particular aphorism to be false and limiting.

personally, I'm not too bothered that my photos - the product of an inexperienced, young and uncommitted person - fall short of being art. I suspect that your situation is a bit different though. be honest with yourself, rather than with us if you must, but are disappointed in the medium or in your own efforts?

[Anti-Hero]

Originally Posted by jsrockit

Ut oh, are you saying digital photography is a lesser art than film photography? Also, are you saying if you don't process your own film, you are a lesser artist than someone who does? I think you may be confusing art with craft.

Are you a troll or what? I don't know where I wrote any of that in my last post. Youre reading too much into it, and that's this whole threads problem

[pakeha]

Originally Posted by Pablito

yes, absolutely. or a strap thread. or an airport x-ray thread.

ha,very selective quote reply
You choose the `bar talk' throw away line, and not the youth versus age line,.As someone over 50 i know how uncomfortable my generation gets with youth challenging the status quo.Someone here even referred to the OP as a `kid'..very mature
The OP has in fact dragged some interesting, thoughtful replies with this.Far more interesting than any bag thread ,look what i just brought thread,what should i buy thread,i got hassled taken photo`s thread, except of course the link provided by Sejanus.Aelianus
This is after all the Philosophy of Photography section, nothing wrong with a bit of humour included.Get over your selves.

[jkrumsick]

Originally Posted by Peter_wrote:

oh, this thread is still going...

i enjoy photography and i am interested into it. but for me it is just not the same as literature, music or painting e.g.
i like it because it is very personal and impulsive, but maybe this strength is also its weakness. it has some other kind of quality than a painting or a novel. not meant to be judgmental
just my personal view.

For you it may be very personal and impulsive. I surely would find those writing great works of literature to take their work personally (if it is good literature) although it may not be impulsive. But I think that there is plenty of photography that is not impulsive. There are photos that take years to create. And there are masters that can take a photo in one week what another person can take in a year.

I really disagree with your statement about photography as lousy. I think just because so many people are creating imagery these days does lower the bar somewhat... but there are still people out there with amazing visions that require a great deal of talent and elbow grease to make. Just because neither you (nor I) are one of those people mean that you should call their whole medium "lousy".

[mgilbuena]

Originally Posted by Peter_wrote:

maybe i just wrote that, because i am somehow surprised ( in a negative way), that i am trying to be productive by photography.

and that is somehow hilarious. because you just snap randomly pictures without time for thinking ( i the case you are not in a studio).

And for precisely this reason photography is art; photography is a truly unique medium that allows us to experience the world from another's vantage point.

I have often heard the argument "How do you know what blue looks like? Perhaps what you see as blue is what I see as purple." What does a waterfall look like to one who has never had the sense of sight? Or the rumble of a speeding race car for one who has never had hearing?

Photography, specifically, allows one to experience moments from another. To go to a world that perhaps is not accessible, such as Mars, or experience the terror of a war gone past. It truly is a magical medium -- and that certainly is art in my mind.

[Leigh Youdale]

Originally Posted by Peter_wrote:

so just for this statement of charlie, this thread has some value.

Sorry Peter. In spite of a sensible response from Charlie, this thread has no value at all. It's just self indulgent crap. There are far better places to research your question that to fling it into an RFF forum and expect enlightenment. Or maybe you just wanted to provoke some reaction? Well, you've achieved that. Now go and find something useful to do. If your posts continue their current trend you'll be telling us what you ate for breakfast any day now. Nobody cares.

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

this thread has no value at all. It's just self indulgent crap.

Couldn't you say about any view with which you disagree?

I wonder if one of the advantages of photography is that it allows people, who lack the skills of draftmanship, to illustrate what they see and share that with others.

[Chris101]

Originally Posted by Peter_wrote:

i don't know, if photography is art. but when it is art, it is a lousy one.
...

Lemme take a crack at this.

Most here are taking the position that photography is an art, and arguing that point. But Peter, you seem to have already claimed that photography is sometimes art - you said "when it is" not "if it is". So I'll start out by agreeing that photography is sometimes art. I read the crux of your statement to be that photography is lousy at being an art.

Here I also agree. Photography is a "lousy" art. How so? Let me contrast photography to several other disciplines thought of as being capable of producing art. First let's look at sculpture, no one would deny that there are many sculptures that are nearly universally thought of as art.

Sculpture can take many forms, from a small bust in a study to a huge amorphous blob situated in the heart of a great city. Sculpture knows no limits in material, form or size. Sculptures can be static, or they can move, they can be something one experiences from the outside, or you can get inside them. In some cases, you can even interact physically with a sculpture.

Painting is an art form. Paintings are close to photographs, but they are more. A painting begins as a blank canvas, and the painter adds to the canvas until the paining intended emerges. While the canvas is usually a rectangular piece of flat material, this need not be the case. A painting can be made on the interior or exterior of a structure, on a vehicle, even on a human. The subject of a painting is also limitless. Anything the painter can conceive - heaven and hell are popular topics - can be painted. The objects in a painting need follow no physical laws, indeed a painting need not even contain any objects.

Dance is not an art I spend much time thinking about, but it too is an art that enjoys many degrees of freedom. Traditional artistic dances, modern interpretive dance, and ballet are well defined movements of humans on a stage designed for exhibition, and in this aspect resemble photography perhaps more than other traditional arts. However the concept of temporal change by human beings - dance if you will - can be expressed in many different ways as well. The guy who walked a tight rope between the, then standing, twin towers comes to mind, as does the guy who shot himself in the foot in the 1970s (and ushered in the post-modern era.)

Photography on the other hand has few freedoms. We (photographers) are tied to an actual scene from which light is reflected. We need to collect that reflected light by chemical, mechanical or electronic means. That is, we require a machine or process to make the thing we produce. Nearly all photographs are bounded by a static, geometric border. And the processes we use to make the work requires tools outside our control. In the words of the US president, "we didn't make that". Of course we can take various parts of the process back - caffienol, van dyke, wet collidion/silver halide emulsions, but at some point photography relies on technology, be it high resolution electronic sensors, or chemicals produced by century old processes in factories located in Eastern Europe.

All in all, the boundries and limits that photography requires make it a "lousy" art. But it is exactly that "lousiness" that makes it expressive for the artist, and artistic in and of itself.

[alistair.o]

Very soon a good many of you will be sipping martini's with your little finger cocked whilst passing judgement in a louder voice than is necessary...
To the OP, here it is:

I like that - Ah, thanks
I don't like that - oh ok.

Even with a goodly amount of morphine coursing through me, this thread has managed to irritate me.

Couldn't y'all just let it be photography.

[zvos1]

If few pieces of metal welded together are considered an art than photography is an art as well. There is no such this as "lousy" art in my opinion.

[bobbyrab]

Originally Posted by Leigh Youdale

Sorry Peter. In spite of a sensible response from Charlie, this thread has no value at all. It's just self indulgent crap. There are far better places to research your question that to fling it into an RFF forum and expect enlightenment. Or maybe you just wanted to provoke some reaction? Well, you've achieved that. Now go and find something useful to do. If your posts continue their current trend you'll be telling us what you ate for breakfast any day now. Nobody cares.

Why would you do this? A thread title that must have given you some warning the subject wasn't for you, then you read 60+ posts that obviously pissed you off but still you keep reading, then you spend even more time typing out your judgment on it. Should we care about your pronouncments but not the OP's?

[jsrockit]

Originally Posted by Anti-Hero

Are you a troll or what?

The internet's most famous reply to say when you quote a post and don't agree. Yes, I was reading into it... what was I supposed to do?

[jsrockit]

Originally Posted by Chris101

Photography on the other hand has few freedoms. We (photographers) are tied to an actual scene from which light is reflected.

And the changes in light provide infinite possibilities. Feels like freedom when I'm out doing it.

[bobbyrab]

Back to the subject.
This thread has made me dwell on photography as art, and despite the obvious protestations that art can't be assessed on monetary value, if you look at it monetarily it is obviously the poor relation in the art world.
Let's say you've amassed a collection of original prints from whoever you consider to be the best photographers of the last 100 years. How many would you have to sell to buy a lesser work by Freud, Bacon, Pollock or Warhol?
I don't known who's the highest valued photographer, I know Gursky sells for high figures, but he's using the photographic process to achieve a piece rather than it being a photograph in itself, so what photographers works achieve prices commensurate with the painters mentioned above?
Obviously I'm playing devils advocate here, but I do think that there is something about photography that sets it aside from other artistic endeavours, it does involve art, but so does fashion, architecture, advertising and many other disciplines, but they aim to serve another function first, art itself is not the goal nor is it in most photography, for me photography should pick up art along the way.

[jsrockit]

Originally Posted by bobbyrab

I don't known who's the highest valued photographer, I know Gursky sells for high figures, but he's using the photographic process to achieve a piece rather than it being a photograph in itself, so what photographers works achieve prices commensurate with the painters mentioned above?

Give it time... it is very new to the art collecting world (in comparison to other arts).

[kbg32]

Whether photography is art or not depends upon one's background. There are those here that have advanced degrees in art or photography, and those that came to photography from other backgrounds. Many here have studied art/photo history and believe without question that photography is an art. There will always be doubters. That is what helps to push the envelope.

[kbg32]

Cindy Sherman has the destinction of having one of her works sold at auction for 3.9 million USD. The highest ever paid for a photograph.

Thank g-d it wasn't AA.

[Charlie Lemay]

I have long felt that photography is becoming the dominant art form of our time, but the art establishment doesn't know it yet. The establishment is always the last to get it when a revolution is happening. They always see it as insurrection that makes no sense in the current context and needs to be suppressed.

The reason I believe photography is is becomming the dominant art form is that the new marketplace for art is in the virtual world. Traditional arts like painting are dimished in this world, because they depend so heavily on tactile experience to be fully appreciated. Photography, on the other hand, is enhanced, a medium of light that is now light, a medium where information, a crebral experience, is more important than the tactile.

It is not like this kind of paradigm shift has not happened before, In fact,
painting was not always in charge. It supplanted architecture and sculpture during the Rennaisance primarily because it was more cost effective and portable.

The future of art may be more like Wikipedia and the new economy that values information and makes it easily available if we all cooperate in it. Maybe the future is a place where we all make images we share and the old business model, and thus the primary reason we seem to need to define art, dissapears.

I think it's worth thinking about.

[Charlie Lemay]

Fuji still makes film because they see it as a profitable niche market. Some people and organizations in the art world may value photography, but very few believe it is more important than previous art media. They created a place at the table, but for the newcomer to aspire to be at the head of the table is perceived by many as unthinkable. i think that's how all establishments work if you look at history. Remember how B&W photography tried to keep color out of the club, and how some still try to keep digital out even today. This is all human nature, and humans make up every establishment. Like antiquities, the old art forms may continue to fetch ever more exorbitant prices on their way to being priceless, but the future is inevitable and the old guard will always resist it until it reaches the tippiing point. I think that tipping point is coming in our lifetime.

[haempe]

Art? Nowadays? Pfft...

Isn't the term "art" just a simple marketing instrument to sell useless things to ignorant people?

For me photography isn't useless. It captures the fleeting moments of life.
Is it art? I don't care.