Is a photographer an artist?

Mateo · Feb 25, 2004

steve said:
There is a long tradition in visual arts of the artist not making the final print. In lithography, and often with etchings, a printer is employed to make the print for the artist. This is because the printer has greater skill with the techniques needed to ensure a good print. This does not detract from either the work as being art, or the person who made the original image (on a plate or stone) as being an artist. Why should photography be any different than other forms of graphic expression in this respect?

This is true. And guess who owns the copyrights after the edition has been made. Not the party with the original concept.

Ed Sukach · Feb 26, 2004

Mateo said:
This is true. And guess who owns the copyrights after the edition has been made. Not the party with the original concept.

I must be missing something here. According to the copyright laws, the copyright is created at, and the originator owns the copyright from the conception of the work, unless it is specifically transferred. There is only one exception that I can think of, offhand, and that is in the case of "Work For Hire"- narrowly and and contracturally defined as such.

What am I missing ... something about an "edition"?

William John Smith · Feb 26, 2004

Whether or not photography and art are the same thing is beside the point, since art resides not in a technique but in a knowing application of insight.
The problem, then, is not whether photography can be art, but in confusing art with the finished product or the technique employed. It is the artist's psychological attitude toward the process of creation alone that signifies the artistic validity of the act that produces the "work of art.
As Coomarasway once said, "Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting "art." As the words "artifact" and "artificial" imply, the thing made is a work of art, made by art, but not itself art; the art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made. What is made according to the art is correct; what one makes as one likes may very well be awkward. We must not confuse taste with judgment, or loveliness with beauty, for as Augustine says, some people like deformities." ...............William John Smith, 1980

Foto Ludens · Mar 4, 2004

It's very hard to disagree with Mr. Willam John Smith. If we want to define the artist, we have to define what ART is...
Therein lies the problem, since if we take Smith's view of it, we are defining art to be an imaterial (sp?) essence, much like Plato's notions of absolute values. They exist, somewhere (everywhere?) out there, and only what takes part of the absolute beauty is truly beautiful. In the same way, only what takes part of the ABSOLUTE ART is truly a work of art.
This is very much the approach I have seen art professors and students take.
Either that or "it's art if I say so, dangit!"
As much as both of these theories might be true, none of them are particularly usefull... And I personally don't buy either.

What, then, is art?
We know that some photography is art, but not every photograph is art. the same goes for painting, singing, etc...
Okay, then what IS art?
Well, I don't know, but if no one objects, I'll post back later, once my brain is throughly fried...

By the way, sorry for the long post, I had a philosophy class today, and my brain is working that way right now.

ian_greant · Mar 5, 2004

Enough theory,

I'll make a statement.

I'm an artist who is sometimes only a photographer. I'm certainly a craftsman (although those who have seen my rhumba film agitation method may call that assertation into question) and occasionally I create concepts that I pass onto other people to create.

What's all this mean? I couldn't care less. I'm too busy having fun.

bump

PS Poco.. I like the performance art photography... Sometimes I think me using my 4x5 must look like an interpretive dance to onlookers.

bjorke · Mar 5, 2004

...as far as the IRS is concerned, a photographer is an artist. And subject to the same restrictions -- no deducting "Art supplies" that don't generate significant income.

KB
Artist
OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED BY A BRANCH OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Bruce Osgood · Mar 5, 2004

Is Photography Art?
Only in the hands of an artist.

Is it a Craft?
Only in the hands of a craftsman.

It seems to me if you have to ask the question you're not working hard enough.

ThomHarrop · Mar 5, 2004

A photographer is an artist if they are an artist. Othwise, no.

Foto Ludens · Mar 5, 2004

It's not fair, I had a good post ready to go, and then my computer went beserk. I'll just sumarize it:

We do not know what we mean when we say art.

For some of us, it is a sentiment, much like faith. I do not understand faith, therefore I do not understand art. But isn't it true that sometimes we feel that something we see, or have done, is art? We cannot explain it, but its there.

Sometimes, we rationalize our ideals of art by considering how much devotion, craftsmanship, purpose, etc... has been put in a work before we can call it art or not. Needless to say, this is complete nonsense. All that matters is the image, not what came before, or during, the making of the image.

The easiest way out of this mess is to dismiss the term art altogether, and be content that we are photographers. Heck, maybe we're even pretty good at it.

But just to have fun, I'll attempt to define art, in a wonderfully dogmatic, probably false, paragraph:

Art is the result of other people's ignorance regarding our work. They do not understand it, and think it special, mabe even mythical. Seeing this reaction, we are flattered, and allow them to convince us that we are special, although we do not understand why (but neither do they, remember?). And so the term art is coined, and younger photographers (or what-have-you) seeing this, aspire to be artists themselves, in an even greater ignorance of the term. But by then it's too late, it's been defined in dictonaries as "the creation of beautiful and significant things" (onelook.com), even though we all can think of at least one ugly, and plenty of insignificant "works of art".

Does that do the trick?

[/i]

Chuck_P · Mar 5, 2004

I'm a photographer (when I'm not earning a living)and I enjoy taking photographs of things that interest me, no matter how simple a subject. I enjoy even more the time spent in the darkroom and I feel that I have some degree of a skill (that I feel is improving since being away from the darkroom in 18 years) that not everybody can claim. Art? I'll leave that determination up to others to decide. I don't really concern myself with that aspect of it. I'm certainly not trying to create art when I take a photograph and produce a print.

removed account4 · Mar 5, 2004

so, the act of taking a camera, composing an image in the camera ground glass &C and pressing the shutter makes the the photographer an artist.

what if there is no film in the camera, and the image was taken and is in the head of the photographer, with no physical recording on film or paper - only the memory of the event.

is he still an artist, even though the final result is only for him/her and not for other people to enjoy?

Bruce Osgood · Mar 5, 2004

jnanian said:
what if there is no film in the camera, and the image was taken and is in the head of the photographer, with no physical recording on film or paper - only the memory of the event.

is he still an artist, even though the final result is only for him/her and not for other people to enjoy?

Yep, do it all the time. Many times I'll go back to something with a camera.

Foto Ludens · Mar 6, 2004

Anyone interested in the definition of art may want to check out a book called "Art & Fear: observations On The Perils (And Rewards) of Artmaking", by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It's a good book. Does it define art? Not in any clear way. But it's worth it anyhow.

here's a little (well, not so little) quote from it:

"Recently a painter of some accomplishment (but as insecure as the rest of us) was discussing his previous night's dream over coffee. It was one of those vivd technicolor dreams, the kind that linger on in exact detail even after waking. In his dream he found himself at an art gallery, and when he walked inside and looked he found the walls hung with painting - amazing paintings, paintings of passionate intesity and haunting beauty. Recaunting his dream, the artist ended fervently with, 'I'd give anything to be able to make paintings like that!'
'Wait a minute!' his friend exclaimed.'Don't you see? those were your paintings! They came from your own mind. Who else could have painted them?"

Substitute painter with photographer, etc...

So yeah, if you click without film, it's still art.

Or as much as the one with film would have been.

Unless it's performance art (as someone mentioned earlier)

Or a post-modernist statement

In which case the photographer ought to shut up, buy some film, and quit trying to be a fake non-conformist.

ThomHarrop · Mar 6, 2004

You guys have to complicate everything.

Ed Sukach · Mar 6, 2004

Vapor trails. Art is the particle and I am the cloud chamber.

I have *no* idea of "what art is". As I've said, the ancient Greeks, who were marvelously adept in finding terms to describe all kinds of esoteric happenings, seem to have given up on this one. They coined a term that seems to "identify" art : "aesthetic" which basically means, "I don't know what it is, and as near as I can tell, no amount of reasoning is going to get me there either.

In a cloud chamber, we cannot "see" the particles - whatever they are called - mesons, pions, peons ... some are too short-lived for any hope of being seen ... but we have evidence that they are there by the effect they have in the surrounding atmosphere in the cloud chamber - they leave vapor trails.
So it is with me. I can't consciously "see" art - but I know that it exists, by its effect - the "vapor trails" left on my "being".

Thilo Schmid · Mar 6, 2004

Brian,

"Photographer" and "Artist" are independend attributes. This is much like "Photographer" and "Professional". You are a Professional, if you make a living out of it. You are an Artist, if you do have "a higher concept" (IMO).

Joe Lipka · Mar 6, 2004

This is definitely art. A simple yes or no question generates three pages of responses.

The answer is "yes."

Foto Ludens · Mar 6, 2004

Ed Sukach said:
Vapor trails. Art is the particle and I am the cloud chamber.
In a cloud chamber, we cannot "see" the particles - whatever they are called - mesons, pions, peons ... some are too short-lived for any hope of being seen ... but we have evidence that they are there by the effect they have in the surrounding atmosphere in the cloud chamber - they leave vapor trails.
So it is with me. I can't consciously "see" art - but I know that it exists, by its effect - the "vapor trails" left on my "being".

Sounds good.

So that good feeling we get when we shoot or print is a vapor trail? That would make sense. After all, the feeling itself doesn't exist (materialy). Its all chemical signals in the brain.

Right?

Ed Sukach · Mar 6, 2004

Andre R. de Avillez said:
So that good feeling we get when we shoot or print is a vapor trail? That would make sense. After all, the feeling itself doesn't exist (materialy). Its all chemical signals in the brain.
Right?

Right.

Cheryl Jacobs · Mar 6, 2004

I dunno. I just take pichers.

Donald Miller · Mar 6, 2004

Cheryl Jacobs said:
I dunno. I just take pichers.

Yup, me too.

Juan Valdenebro · Jan 7, 2022

As long as the photographer makes art.
A lot of paintings are not art.

Sirius Glass · Jan 8, 2022

Is a photographer an artist? Yes

Andrew O'Neill · Jan 8, 2022

Arthurwg · Jan 8, 2022

Ich bin ein berliner!

Is a photographer an artist?

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Ed Sukach

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ian_greant

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Is a photographer an artist?

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