Can photography be art?

It's a bit sad that the discussion ended up about word definitions, but as we've gone in that direction, I don't feel these definitions are correct.

"Craft" is the technical skill involved in making something. Something that was never intended to be perceived as art can certainly be described as craft if it is skillfully done. On the other hand, unless randomness is an important part of the process, a piece that has pretensions to be considered art, can also involve craft.

Ansel's work for example, has a high component of technical craft - it wouldn't be what is is without the high technical skill level applied to making it. However, lots of people say there is more to it than the craft, despite the reliance on craft. AA's subject selection, choice of viewpoint, choice of lighting (when to shoot and when not to), the printing stage where he decides which tones to darken and which to lighten, these things all involve artistic judgements, even though craft is involved in the execution of the vision.

It's not one, nor the other.

HCB's decisive moment: that's an artistic decision. Craft is involved in successfully timing the moment to press the button so the camera captures the exact moment in time desired (given the mechanical constraints of the camera), but the decision about when is the precise moment to be captured is pure artistry. A moment earlier or later, the exact same craft is employed but the image captured is no longer art, but a failure. The mis-timing can be caused by a failure of craft, but it can also be the result of a failure of artistic vision - the photographer simply fails to realise that a piece of art awaits if only she chooses the right moment.

Have you seen his contact sheets? He was less spontaneous than most folks think.

I haven't but Mike Johnston has and he says something to the effect "I've seen HCB's contact sheets, and he missed the decisive moment a lot".

But let's be fair, one of the most key pieces of gear for any photographer is the waste bin. You really don't want people seeing all the other shots you didn't use. Ruins the mystique.

I wonder what percentage of images captured in the digital era are ever seen. I remember Michael Reichmann saying his was 1%, something like that. I imagine that for sport or wildlife photographers it is a lot less. I don't do wildlife photography much but my retirement present from work was a day spent shooting birds of prey. I think I shot about 6000 frames in one day and used about 50 in the end. Horrendous keeper rate!

Photography can and does aim to do much more than capturing a scene.

I don't wander about looking for scenes to capture. I look for things that intrigue me, be it subject colour, texture, the contrast of light and shadow. The actual scene is secondary.

As an example, last fall I sat on a beach admiring a sun rise, I was fascinated by how the sky and water merged with a few islands 'floating' in a surreal sea of blue. I took a series of images over about 1/2 hour to capture that surreal feeling. The scene was secondary.

I ended up respecting HCB a lot more after seeing the contact sheets. He tries various approaches, settles on one, waits for everything to come together, makes a few images, and moves on. It's not just being in the right place at the right time.

But they're painted by a person, not captured by a device.

Well, indeed, I'm rather fond of shapes and patterns that make up cracks in a wall

Or just capturing a mood. Subject often incidental. This is not a photo of St Paul's it is a picture of a shiny, silvery tone.

So, what makes it a failure is that he missed when he wanted to shoot it? What if he wanted to just miss it? Then it's art?

What makes it the right moment? Because that's the moment when you like it?

I have tons of shots where I timed the shot within a few milliseconds of my intended timing, and for a particular reason. Does that make those shots art? Why?

Sure it takes skill to put paint to canvas, certainly not everybody can do it, but if their painting is an exact recreation of the scene of front of them and they are merely using a different medium to capture it, doesn't that somewhat fall under your definition of craft?

People do both arts and crafts. My argument is that most photography is craft, not art.

Perhaps. But what if it's an exact replica of something that could never have been seen or photographed?

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It seems to me that there's been some evolution from:

"I don't think anyone really produces art with photography."

Did I get that right?

[quote="@LeeJay"]

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

[quote]

You do know that Engineering is an art? Art is not more open ended than engineering. Engineers start with ill-defined problems that have no single “right” answer, but many. I am an Engineer and if you give the same project to 10 Engineers, you will get 10 different outcomes.

The work of an engineer appears precise but concealed are information choices, inarticulate judgments, acts of intuition, and assumptions about the way the world works. The information an engineer conveys is overwhelmingly visual: not verbal, not numerical. Behind the drawings and screen shots are numbers, instructions, programs and tools, just like visual art.

The worst Engineers I know are those without passion and have a closed mind. They never get beyond the textbook. Photographers, who photograph with intent to comunicate with a visual language are artists in just the same way. They make informed choices. They use timing, choice and a command of visual communication to illustrate an idea or concept.

And good engineering can be -- heck, should be -- elegant and beautiful.

But I think the phrase that found it's way into a lot of my patent applications "ones skilled in the art" use the term "art" to mean something different than what we are talking about here. Likewise, "term of art" in a legal document is talking about something else.

Maybe. I've always said if you produce the scene, that's art. Photographing it isn't. Maybe I've come around to allowing drastically unrealistic photography+editing to be art.

This is the headlight of a Honda Odyssey:

Different enough from reality to meet your bar?