Poll: can photography be art?

Earlier, before reading your reply, I was thinking about a recent incident where my son wanted me to buy him some pastries and I took a couple of snapshots with my iPhone and sent them to him. He told me he just wanted to see what they had and what I sent him looked like I was trying to sell them to him. He didn't want that, so in this instance I could have done "better."

Sometimes it obvious that there was a lot done in post:

Where would you put light painting? Little done post-exposure, but a lot done during the exposure. Focus stacking? IR? Panos?

I agree, but I don't think that is so for "artistic" or "artsy."

I have always viewed photography not only as non-art, but as anti-art. That is the approach I use for most of my photography. I watch these landscape photographers on YouTube, they are always searching the most beautiful and unique location in the mountains or by the sea, and set up their camera on the tripod and patiently wait for the most dramatic skies and the most dynamic lighting before they finally press the shutter for that one special shot.

My approach to landscape is the opposite, searching for the most banal and ugliest neighbourhoods in the city, and then I just walk around and quickly point and shoot dozens or even hundreds of photos under the most dull lighting conditions possible. Other photographers try to make the most alluring photo, I try to make the most repulsive photos. I just want to rub the viewer's face in their own vomit and force them to look in the mirror.

I see other photographers complain when their local art gallery cancel a planned exhibition of their work due to the gallery's anti-photography policies, but as a photography I wear that as a badge of honour. Even if an art gallery actually accepts photography, my photos will never be the ones that will get displayed their walls, or anyone's wall for that matter, and that is my goal and what guides me as a photographer. I think that is exactly what makes photography as a medium special compared to other potential mediums of art: how easy it is to capture the most unpleasant, everyday things immediately and realistically with so much detail, the very things that people don't want to see or be reminded of.

This appears to be a collage of images that you created with intent. So, in my opinion, that would qualify as "Art" since it encompasses several of the compositional guidelines that are what artists use to create visually engaging images.

Sounds like art to me.

I once attended a Royal Photographic Society open day, where the RPS explained the application process for the ARPS Distinction. The example submission they used for the demo was a set of photos depicting rather nasty dead things. It was a very neatly prepared panel of images and a successful application.

The judging team explained that the judging criteria sets out very clearly that judges needed to judge objectively whether the submission complied with the other distinction criteria. They absolutely were not to decide on the basis of whether they liked the submission or not. That was forbidden.

I'm not sure how easy it is in practice for someone to completely disregard their own feelings about the images, but that is what they were supposed to do. Their judging criteria recognises that art can be art even if you don't personally like it or even if it bores you or actually disgusts you.

Challenging being a judge, I think, but their interpretation strongly suggests that you can't create anti-art because anti-art becomes art itself. The fact that many people may think it ugly cannot prevent it achieving art status. Again, I think we need to separate the act of become art from judgements as to the quality of art. Bad art is still art.

I suspect this interpretation leaves us in a position where even something produced by random chance ends up being perceived as legitimate art if presented as such. All we are left with is being able to claim it's bad art.

I'm deeply unimpressed by the placement of a glass of water on a little shelf 12 feet up a wall and the claim it is art, seems like fraud to me, but this piece has plenty of defenders. All I'm left with is to say, if it is art, it is bad art.

My ten cents on the question.

Of course it can but so can pretty much anything else, it seems. For decades, we've been learning to live and make sense of a postmodern, some would say "post truth" world in which formerly accepted notions of "reality", "fact" and "truth" now compete for validity with opinions, feelings and experience. The question can be put more broadly: what actually makes art, art? What makes a photograph a piece of art other than just a photo of my dog? A question I once asked on this forum was, "What makes a beautifully shot photo of say, a landscape, "art" rather than just desktop wallpaper? I got no answers at the time perhaps because the question is so complex.

A lot of what we once took for granted as one defining quality of art was the talent and skill, the difficulty and sheer hard work that went into producing it. That assumption began to die somewhere around the late 1800's when the camera replaced representation in visual art.

In sculpture, we've learned that any found object - a pile of house bricks (Carl Andre), a porcelain urinal or a bicycle wheel (Marcel Duchamp), a banana duct-taped to a gallery wall (Maurizio Cattelan) or any other ready-made - can be art. In music, a 1952 audience "listened" to a concert performance in which no musical instruments were played (John Cage). In photography, Man Ray explored techniques creating patterns with everyday objects placed on photographic film. Such work may be theoretical or experimental and the actual technical skills involved may be minimal at best but we still accept it as art.

The transformation from everyday object to object d'art seems to require little more than the context of intentional agency: "it's art if I intend it as art", especially if the creator already has a reputation not to mention the corroboration of a gallery willing to exhibit it or a collector willing to pay for it. Photographs intended for forensic or legal evidence on the other hand, would be unlikely to be described as art and this I suggest, has nothing to do with the content. Jackson Pollock bought cans of household paint to drip onto a canvas and today, his paintings are worth millions. But take away the monetary value of such work and what are we left with?

So yes, photography can be art but a much more difficult question to answer is how do we decide if a particular photography is "good art"?

That question is indeed more difficult, and much more personal.

I too believe that an image of record can cross lines.

~ Estelle [Music and Lyrics by Dan Bern

~Art and Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking - David Bayles, Ted Orland

Emphasis mine.

This is your mark...your niche.... I too find that 'galleries' are for many parts, in the past...or at least formal galleries. I do see some that look for that difference thing, be it art or photo. So keep doing what you are doing... your niche. It is unique.

Also...I find that many photo's demand a gallery of work as opposed to a painting where a work of 'one' is okay. While many photo's no doubt stand on their own like a painting, projects and themes (much like you have) need a gallery. Keep searching, you will find one.

A light painting is a light painting....somewhere in the world and lost in between. Photography? yes? ...artistic movement with hands recording on a photo? Yes ....There are a set of skills needed to capture the light one wants or, one can just wing it and see what you get. Either way, I don't think it fits any more into a group and label it under a huge umbrella as photography is now, any more than I would say that Portrait Street is in the same group as Candid street. I wouldn't want photography to become so rigid that 'IT HAS TO FIT" into some category and yet as it is now, they all fit under one category in galleries which is just ART.

But I feel an explanation of sorts belongs to each photo. So captions.. and in that caption tell what was done and by what. Why do we have to think of photography the same way we think of paintings (oil, pastel etc).... where one word states it all and separates them all? Why not have captions that explain that photo? jim

Traditionally, the descriptor that is applied to a photograph that is similar that applied to paintings (oil on board, acrylic on canvas, etc) describes the way the print is produced (inkjet print on watercolor paper, Pa/Pt print on linen, etc).

But you're talking about something that describes the entire process, I think. So what would that look like for conventional B&W film photography? Camera, lens, film, settings, developer, enlarger, paper and grade or filters used, all the dodging and burning that was performed, contrast reduction mask description if used, bleaching description, paper developer, fixing and hypo neutralizing methods, toner, how the spotting was done, mounting method?

I like to title my images, and I sometimes caption my reportage work, but I’m generally of the opinion that if I have to explain the picture, I’ve failed as an artist.

In the other thread about this I got told off by someone when I tried to explain what art is to me 😉So this time I'll say, no it can't be. Never seen anything taken with a camera that says to me, I'm art. Plenty of want to be artists I see, by the ton, but yet to see one that I consider art. Not here or anywhere. Everyone has a different opinion.

Danny.

All my images get a title. The title always has a meaning to me. But it may not have an obvious meaning to an observer.

It may be descriptive in some way, or refer to color in the image. Sometimes the title is simply a location, or the name of the event in which the image was taken. But, as you have said, if it needs to explain the image, I've failed.

Rich

Must admit, I've used titles for years on shots.

I mean why not.

Danny.

Well, I think you've illustrated something additional about titles.

The best way I can say it is: "If the image stands on its own, the title is an additional enjoyable element."

Except for the first image, I like all the other titles. I would have bought any of them for the inherent image quality and would have enjoyed the whimsical nature of any the titles, even identifying them in framing and displaying them.

I have done just that for many of the images that hang in my house.

(BTW, some of your images are art.) 😉

Rich

To muddy the waters a bit… (more?)

Unraveling the Mystery of 'Boring' Photography | The Photographic Eye

I might have difficulty identifying an individual Eggleston image as art, but the body of work qualifies.

I have this challenge myself with Minor White — I just don't get it and, overall, his work doesn't speak to me. He was a favorite of the first photography curator at one of our big local art museums though — so I get to see a lot of the work, printed and hanging on a wall. (Personally, I wish they'd devote more of that space to their Dianne Arbus folio.)

Edit to add: I do intend to revisit White's work with an eye toward it being a precursor to The Haiku School.

While I agree with the sentiment, I do find it sad that Adobe has such a grip on the world of imaging that the term "photoshop" is used when any editor could apply.

Typed on my Adobe-free computer, of course ...