Can photography be art?

But there is at least one person saying it can't.

Both are contentious topics ... as are some other things that have been posted in the thread. Contention seems to happen a lot when people disagree.

That was not the point. The point was that the two are unrelated topics once you accept that everything can be art. E.g., sitting on a chair can be art (see Marina Abramovic).

P.S.: One wrong-way driver does not mean that the road goes in both directions.

One?

Try googling "is photography art" and see how many pages of articles you can turn up.

It seems to me you are struggling to cope with people who have a different to your opinion.

I'm still struggling to understand how photography is "entirely different" from cinematography.

I think the fact that at least two conflicting answers exist for the same question in this thread is more interesting and significant than the fact that at least two different questions have been asked and answered in this thread.

In any case, my point - the one about how easily contention enters discussions - remains.

@LeeJay

www.moma.org/collection/about/curatorial-departments/photography#

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) began collecting modern photography in 1930 and established the department in 1940. The Museum's holdings of more than 25,000 works constitute one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary photography in the world.

Why not mosey down and check it out?
11 West 53rd Street.

Still photography and video is permitted for personal, noncommercial use only unless otherwise noted. Flash, tripods, and camera extension poles are not allowed.

This question and thread is in the wrong century, go back one then ask the question. Heck, I just finished perusing my newly bought book on Herzog in which the debate then was, can a photograph be in colour and still be considered art?

Or remember the can an inkjet print be art debates. They even came up with a name for inkjet prints that is the French word for ejaculation to disguise their nature.

I tried and did not find any serious content that doubted that photography could be art.

French for "squirt", I think. I think the translation as ejaculation is the satirical version. Which it fully deserves in my opinion. Silly art world marketing. It's ink.

I agree that some though not the vast majority of photography can be art.

In a similar way some paintings (perhaps by art club members filling in time) is definitely not art.

The word giclée was adopted by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working at Nash Editions. He was looking for a word that would not have the negative connotations of “inkjet” or “computer generated”. It is based on the French word gicleur, the French technical term for an inkjet nozzle. The French verb form gicler meant to spray, spout, or squirt. Duganne settled on the noun giclée, meaning “the thing that got sprayed” and also, in French slang, ejaculation (a connotation Duganne did not know).

Pedantically, I’d respond that all photographs can be art but many – and yes, it’s highly likely it’s the the vast majority – just aren’t. It’s more down to maker’s intention than skill or execution. I have a simple inner dialogue definition of art that works for me, but requires a little mental flexibility, so of course it was torn apart by jackals, along with a virtual piece of me, when I had the audacity to share it on the other DPR (or maybe it was on Ars Technica) so I won’t bother. I’m okay with it, and it helps me understand my goals and motivation for making individual images. Some are art. Some are records. Some are just for the hell of it. Images can move between categories over time — the latter often become my best art in-spite of themselves.

LeeJay is not going to change, nothing said here will make him waiver one bit. Its been that way on these forums for years. He seems to have fairly rigid and clinical definitions for things, and that's OK. Whether LeeJay sees photographs as art or a craft has no bearing on what the rest of us think. He has his clear vision and many of you guys kind of don't. We are getting into a gray areas of which actual photographs qualify as art, and that is severely subjective and undefinable. I fall into that camp as well. At least LeeJay doesn't have to fuss with it. Maybe that's his goal all along, just keep it simple.

i don't think you should see them as ends of one pole. I'd rather think of them as different axes.

It means using a word processing is not an art form. Composing the novel is.

The performance is not art, the composition is.

And, as I've already said, that's fine. The tool is not capturing what's already there (despite the famous "removing the unneeded bits" quote).

[quote[
you seem to have forgotten that photography reduces three dimensions to two. There are choices in that which can be artistic.

It's "Lee Jay" (my first and middle names, but the forum software doesn't allow spaces), and I haven't been given a reason to change.

Well, I'm an engineer and scientist and mother nature is not flexible about her rules.

Neither what I think nor what you think has any bearing on anything outside of the language we have all agreed to use. It doesn't affect the photography itself at all. It's just a way to categorize activities.

How about this. Photography that seeks to accurately represent the scene, regardless of the aesthetic intent or quality, is not art, it's craft. Photography where either the scene is created or the photo is so severely altered that it no longer represents a remotely accurate portrayal of the scene is art.