How much editing is justified?

[Pieter12]

If you replace "must" with "can", then I agree. Taken as it's formulated, literally, I think it flies in the face of how much art comes into being. There's a lot of mucking about especially in the 'fuzzy front-end' of the artistic process, that constitutes a search for intentionality and direction. And the degree of control by artists of the process involved is really very variable. Some like to be in that position (and manage it), quite a few don't. Artists are a rather motley crew, it seems to me. They appear to defy generalizations. Perhaps, if anything, that's their most defining characteristic. That, and being overall utterly allergic to anyone saying the word 'must' in their vicinity. Tends to freak them out pretty badly, much of the time.

Street, wildlife, sports and candid photography in general would seem to be exceptions.

 

[Vaughn]

... I'm fighting anyone that says Duck Dodgers isn't art.

As hunks of breathing meat, we can individually call something art or not art...and be right as rain. Just be ready to duck!

Western art has spread across the globe, not always on its own merits, but on the back of commerce, conquest, and the allure of the foreign. And as Westerners, we tend to elevate our own past and culture, and appropriate others (and it goes the other way, too, of course). It makes looking at art from a global perspective difficult.

One fun aspect on making single transfer carbon prints is that is reverses the image. It gets me to thinking. There is a tendency for a people to look at images in a way that is influenced by their culture's form of writing. Western writing is read left to right, so that influences a left-to-right 'reading' of an image. So an image that encourages the eye to enter from the left and keeps it from exiting stage-right can work well for westerners -- but might create barriers for those who culturally would prefer entering the image from the left.

Square images are nice that way...there tends to be a more circle like movement than left-right/right-left...perhaps it is a minor factor in Kenna's Japan work.

 

[Don_ih]

"Intention" is meaningless. I can intend any number of things and fail in the attempt. Furthermore, I can intend to do one thing and result in something different. Also furthermore, my intent is not something anyone else is privy to.

Physical art (all those objects people generally call art) has an existence on its own - it does not rely on an artist to be, even if it does rely on an artist to become. It can cease to be regarded as art, though - just as various things seemingly never intended to be art can eventually be considered art.

(Note that some art does not persist after the act of the artist. That would be performance.)