Can photography be art?

Congratulations — another piece of art. If it were mine I’d crop it just enough to eliminate the shadow(?) noise at the top of the frame. (I might even crop more — but that’s down to taste.)

Nicely done.

It's a reflection of the shoreline.

What makes it a piece of art? Because you like it?

Symmetry. Story. Expression. Mood.

And yes, I’m a sucker for a good floatplane shot.

It's fun to try to time a shot to capture a rudder drag on landing. Gotta be quick!

But Duchamp's urinal was not a toilet it was a fountain. ;-)

Context, concept.

Because a toilet or urinal can be found in a gallery and called art, does that make every toilet art? If so, can one expand that to say that every object is art?

Art is (can be?) a concept that can include context. While one cannot exclude anything specifically from being art, including photographs, one also cannot automatically include everything either.

I think that Duchamp's Fountain is an encapsulation of this conversation.

Just a reminder that LeeJay has been offering his position on this for years. I thought it might be helpful to refer back to where he ("Lee Jay" at the time) and I left it three years ago:

www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4502943?page=5#forum-post-64131926

That exchange suggested that the problem with art as a topic - and also photography's position as a subset of it - is not just about language and definitions. The problem is also about attempting to resolve the answers through logic, which is how he wanted to do it. But as it turns out, logic is not always applicable to human thought, and logic won't necessarily work for this particular purpose.

You're the one who defined photography as not art because of accuracy. Photography is not art because it all it does is simply capture the scene, nothing more. Those are not my definitions, they are yours. And yes, that photo taken with a telephoto lens is automatically art, by your definition. And no, fisheye projection is not an accurate depiction of a scene either. You are just going around in circles at this point.

"I'm not saying art doesn't involve technology, just not technology that captures something already there and puts it to media."

"Photography that seeks to accurately represent the scene, regardless of the aesthetic intent or quality, is not art, it's craft."

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

I defined it as not art because it doesn't create something it uses technology to capture something already there.

No, it captures the scene. I didn't build the lake, the plane or the sky.

Well, your eyes are fisheye lenses. Just stating a fact.

Those are all consistent.

I disagree. You used the camera to capture and create a beautiful moment. Some minor alterations might improve the image, at least in traditional terms, but as is it stands as a well-crafted creation…with enough intent to meet my internal definition of art.

Okay, how is that different from using an audio recorder to record a concert, assuming it comes out well and you like the music? In that case, I'd call the song writer and maybe the performer the artists.

I took pictures as the plane flew past me. This one just happened to have a nice smooth reflection of the sky in it.

And therefore, by your definition, any photo with black and white, blur, distortion, polarization, flash, noise is automatically art.

You pulled the background closer to the plane and blurred the background.

I never said that they weren't.

I never said that they weren't.

I never said that. Someone else suggested that and I asked about it.

Actually, no, I stood in the only place I could (on the shore) and the background isn't blurred by the camera, it's blurred by the water.

You just said: "I defined it as not art because it doesn't create something it uses technology to capture something already there"

Black and white, blur, distortion, polarization, flash, noise are created by the camera and added to the scene through deliberate choices made by the photographer.

You used a telephoto lens thereby pulling the background closer to the plane than it is in real life.

Blur was added to the scene by you the photographer because your choice of focal length, f-stop, and shutter speed. Water is not blurred by default.

You just said: "I defined it as not art because it doesn't create something it uses technology to capture something already there"

I don't think those alterations make them art. Some others do.

61mm and f/8 on 1.6-crop.

I was gonna make a joke about losing your marbles but...:)

LeeJay, while you and others are free to decide whether or not photography can be art, you don't get to make that decision for collective humanity. Human societies around the world have made up their minds about this going back multiple generations. Photography is an art medium and artistic works include photographs. That's simply a fact. Whether you or others choose to accept that reality, is pretty irrelevant to the fact that it is the reality in which we live.

As I've said above, repeatedly, just because it's been done for a long time doesn't make it right.