Pixiq

Rick,

An excellent article – I look forward to others on this theme.

The email you received is sad for it says so much about the closed mind of its writer, content to regurgitate hackneyed ideas about what should no longer be a debate. Shame that thinking is not fashionable.

I number many able artists (in the holding a brush or shaping clay sense and not just mere camera hacks) in my circle of friends and I have often asked them to explain to me what is art…or, most important, what is ‘good art’ in areas where I cannot connect and say “I like that.”

Too often art seems to be what people, the gullible, are told is 'art' and thus they are encouraged to dip (deeply) into wallets for a maggot in formaldehyde (better a snake in Tequila…) or a pile of bricks. And someone laughs all the way to the bank. Good luck to them…

Until that ‘thorn in the flesh’ Michelangelo started to raise awareness of his 'trade', artists were regarded as mere technicians in Italy. I have stood and marvelled in front of many works musing that that youngsters were once ‘apprenticed’ to paint this. Credit went to the Duke or other patron who had commissioned the work for his was the genius: the wielders of brushes were mere functionaries. Well, I would love the technical skills of some of those artisans…we must hang onto the notion that even if ‘reality’ (whatever that is…don’t get started) is in front of the lens we have exercised our creativity in considering which chunk to capture and what light to use…

Paul

There's one logical flaw in your argument. The instances of artists from the painting genre taking a photo back into the studio seem, to me, to suggest that the photo itself was insufficiently arty for their taste - otherwise why not just publish/exhibit it directly?

Technique exists; craft is mastering, controlling it; art is what you choose to do with it. I tend to think photographers deserve credit for the default mode of operation requires having to work with reality rather than choose which bits to selectively ignore or distort.

I like your idea that not all emails are great essays or poems :)

I've often wondered about this subject, whether it was an "art" or a "craft" or either, and came to the conclusion that there is a continuum of arts.

What I mean by that is that certain arts can be created directly from the imagination. The tools involved in writing a novel or writing a symphony are not quite as dependent on the "real" world.

In other words, when the deaf musician writes down the music he hears in his head, then conducts the orchestra, and has to be turned towards the audience at the end to "see" the clapping - it is music that has been written with a tremendous amount of personal freedom.

Whatever lens you choose, shutter speed, or other technical detail, photography begins (although even this is changing in the digital age) - but usually begins with an actual subject that exists.

I don't think that this makes it a lesser art than writing music or painting (which can be based on what you see in your mind) but it's just in a different place on this continuum of arts.

Most of it, is junk. My own included. Of a few hundred thousand shots, maybe 40 are good, special, artistic.

Anyway, it is an interesting subject that will never be settled but part of what I enjoy in contemporary photography is the mixture of shooting and then processing the digital image. (And this from an old guy who worked mostly with view cameras in the beginning).

But it is now possible to do what the painters have done. Begin with the photograph as a blueprint or starting point - and then add to it with your imagination. This raises the art of photography in that continuum I was talking about. (Hope this isn't too long). Dave

Art is just a creation by an individual that reflects a concept that resonates with them. Any tools may be used. The art may be 'bad' or 'good', it may be unoriginal, contrived, simplistic. But if it satisfies the maker then it has served its main purpose. If it is sufficiently original and mind blowing then it may gain wider attraction, be exhibited, and bought for important collections at which point other people will use it as inspiration for their own derivative art.

As I photographer I often get vibes that what I do is just click the shutter. I laugh when I am regularly told someone has painted one of my photos. To me that says the painter doesn't have enough creativity to come up with a pleasing composition or use of light, so they steal mine.

The other issue I have is with people who still insist photography should only portray reality. They ask "is it photoshopped?", as if I can take a crap photo, run it through the unsuck filter and have a masterpiece with no skill.

Photography is just a tool I use to make images I like, it's as simple as that. If other people want to waste their time trying to decide whether it is art or not, that's their problem, I have too many images in my mind I need to work on!

Bill

Well put Bill.

My own reply (above) is something that developed very slowly over the years - and I post it only because the question of whether photography is "art" is the subject of the piece.

Very few people know what goes into pressing that shutter or whatever comes after unless they've spent a massive amount of time doing it.

I only meant to say "well put Bill" but of course now I've said more. DB

Bill. Exactly. I don't know any photographer that doesn't use Photoshop or some sort of program that manipulates images. Personally, I use Lightroom and NIK software most of the time so it is really "Lightroomed" or "NIKED."

What people mean, when they ask that question is: Can I trust this image as being "real."

If you go back to Ansel Adams and the Making of 40 Prints - you see that his dramatic landscapes didn't always start off with such drama. You'll see lots of "+1" or "-2" circles on the contact prints.

When glass plate photography was the norm, photographers had plates made which just had clouds because plates at the time didn't pick up the sky very well. They did prints with the cloud plate sandwich with the landscape plate because otherwise the sky appeared blank.

Some of the early folk liked to put ghosts into their photographs.

Photographs are simply not as real as people seem to think they are. Really :)

Regards, Dave

Great article!

Just a quick note: [sic] means "intentionally so written" and is used only when a mistake in a quote is repeated verbatim (such as when someone misspells something). What you've used are editor's notes - which are normally done with (Ed: this is an editors note) :)

Rock on, stay awesome, keep writing great stuff here on Pixiq!

~ Haje

"Is photography art?" is one of the oldest, and most boring, questions in photography because, of course, it cannot be truly answered as any answer is purely subjective. Good attempt at self-promotion, though. How many adverts for your book did you manage to fit in to this 'article'? How many requests to follow you on Facebook? Glad to see you allowed comments this time unlike your 'articles' on slow shutter speeds!

Interesting post but the issue isn't if photography is art but what the hell is it art anyway?

Read my next comment.

I am too silly a person to participate in a discussion of whether photography is an art or not so let me quote my favorite writer M.Gustave Flaubert on matters of art.

"Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom."

"Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature."

"Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough."

"Of all lies, art is the least untrue."

"One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form."

"The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens."

"There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things."

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."

Whether with a pen, a brush or a camera, whether singing or dancing or standing naked on a sidewalk, these fine words apply.

As for me, "I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none."

Rick

Read Roland Barthes "Camera Lucida" I think that you will find it most interesting.

Let me add, following Barthes thinking, that some of the confusion and debate here is because there are really three elements to any art--the creator, the art and the audience. In conversations about art, these three areas are often mixed up.

In the quotes I sent, Flaubert is speaking about the high esthetic of art in its purest state, that is of the efforts of the creator. Often in your post you've flip-flopped between your experience of a work of art (like the long lost JS Bach work) and your feelings about making your own art art. That's a change of position from audience to creator which confuses the issue and the reader.

That middle component, the art itself, often gets short shrift. Have you seen the photos of Jacques Henri-Lartigue? He took photos at the turn of the 19/20th century when he was just 12. Years ago, I bought a book of his work (big 10x12 inch images in the book) and was astonshed at their beauty--their art.

There were alot of shots in the book of his cousins sliding down bannisters and jumping down stairs and of his fathers's racing cars and gliders.

(( go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/images/lartigue.jpg))

Several years later I saw his original photos. Rick they were tiny, tiny stereo-optican pairs. And these images were in 3D! People and animals and racing cars were suspended in mid-air and they popped out of the frame. The work had a whole different impact now, simply because of the difference in its presentation. The change in the art itself influenced my perception of it.

Ansel Adams used to say that a negative was like a musical score and the print, the performance. The art itself matters and that needs to be discussed too.

Three parts, Rick keep them a bit more separated. It will help to you to clarify what I believe you are trying to say.

ciao

Steve

They are wonderful. But it also skews tha art argument a wee bit. Was a 12 year old intending to make art? And have they become more "art" a century later.