What is Art in Photography?

[David T T]

I find the whole debate boring. I would laugh if someone told me what I was doing wasn't art...then call it craft! There, its done. Let someone else be called the clever boy. People respond strongly to certain images that personally resonate with them, regardless of what critics call them. And socially, I don't want to be respected by socialites, but desired by people looking for photographs/portraits.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

art in photography is what john does

fully agree!

 

[RalphLambrecht]

beauty is in the eyes of the beer holder.

 

[blockend]

Art is completely about context. If something is shown in an art gallery, bought by collectors and handled by agents, it's art. Everything else is photography.

 

[removed account4]

I'll admit, I was terse, I meant that [In-my-opinion]

1) Art should move people, I used a simple, concrete example, pardon me.
2) Art needs time to be assessed.

And thank you for your generous assessment of my opinions. Apparently they are all BS.
But I now know, from your obviously superior wisdom that:

1) $$$ = Art, if it sells enough, It is Art.
2) Individual opinions matter not, only statistical aggregates. If enough of the 'right' people say so, it is Art.

I again, apologize for having and expressing opinions, and shall henceforth compose sonnets and hymns to your name, forevermore.

apologize ?
if you had written it like that i my BS meter wouldn't have gone off
the whole 100 years and making children joyful or cry thing
and suggesting gt82bart was a troll seemed a bit much
is like someone arguing that paintings of unicorns have to show them fart sparkley rainbows ...
not sure where my superior wisdom comes into this .. maybe that was it ?
cause i am no sage or oracle and i've never suggested i was or played one on tv...

i find conversations about what art is or isn't and photography to be interesting
cause anything can be art, and anyone can be an artist. but those who attempt
to do it with a camera tend to get battered because ... they use a camera
and other photograph makers love to nit pick with their nose to the glass inspecting grain
or suggesting kind of ticked off " i could do that " ... ticked off because probably
they DO do that, and probably better, but they don't have the connections
or have no interest in 15mins of fame..
==
pdeeh and ralph
thanks ! you are nice..
as i type this, i'm wearing an ascot a monocle, and a cape.

john

 

[MartinCrabtree]

He may not be a troll but his recent spate of controversial threads suggests an attempt to bait members into debate.

 

[gr82bart]

He may not be a troll but his recent spate of controversial threads suggests an attempt to bait members into debate.

Since September, I've posted 31 threads. How many consititute a "spate of controversial threads attempting to bait members"? Perhaps it's just people of your ilk.

Regards, Art

 

[jim10219]

Art is whatever you say it is. You can't define art. Any attempt to do so is an admission of your own lack of vision and creativity. Art isn't math or science. There's no checklist you can use to define it. There's no proof you can apply to qualify it. There's no test you can run to value it.

Now, just because something is art, doesn't mean it's good. And just because something is good, doesn't mean it's art. And just because something is good art, doesn't mean it's going to be recognized by the art community as such. In fact, most of the best art was widely panned during it's introduction, and only through time has it's importance and value been accepted. This is both liberating and debilitating to artists. Great artists don't always find recognition in their lifetime. Great artists don't always find recognition ever. And sometimes bad artists find recognition during their lifetime, and only to be eventually forgotten (Thomas Kinkade anyone?). So this allows anyone wanting to be an artist a valid reason to continue to pursue their vision even under the crushing weight of constant failure, and serves as a cautionary tale to any artist who may believe they have found success.

So, my point is, if you're trying to approach art like you would science, economics, or math, with rigid precision and dependable formulation, you will fail to understand it. You will only truly begin to understand art, what it is, and what makes it valuable, once you immerse yourself in it. And that process may take you a lifetime or longer. Art is the most difficult thing to understand that humanity has invented, and impossible to master. If you want a challenge, become a theoretical physicist. If you want a guarantee at failure where success can be crippling and humiliation can be liberating, become an artist.

Also, photography is a bad place to approach art from. There are no, and never have been, any great masters of art in the photography realm. There is no photographic equivalent to Van Gogh, Picasso, Michelangelo, etc. There have been some great photographers over the century plus that photography has been around, but there has yet to emerge a true master artist in the field. It's just too new of an art form. And I've found that approaching art is easiest through the masters. They're kind of the key that opens the door to that world.

 

[gr82bart]

So, my point is, if you're trying to approach art like you would science, economics, or math, with rigid precision and dependable formulation, you will fail to understand it. You will only truly begin to understand art, what it is, and what makes it valuable, once you immerse yourself in it. And that process may take you a lifetime or longer. Art is the most difficult thing to understand that humanity has invented, and impossible to master. If you want a challenge, become a theoretical physicist. If you want a guarantee at failure where success can be crippling and humiliation can be liberating, become an artist.

These are my thoughts. I think the article author was on to this at the beginning but then strayed to a space that disappointed me, personally.

Regards, Art

 

[removedacct1]

"Art" has come to be something defined by others - usually people with money whose sole interest is to profit by trading in "Art" - so I long ago gave up using the word to describe what I do. I don't care if people who look at what I do define it as "Art" or not.
What is relevant to me (and hopefully to you as well) is that what I do is creative, intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying to engage in.

"Art" is commodity language. My creativity is mine to use as I wish and cannot be defined by commodity language.

 

[blockend]

Art is whatever you say it is. You can't define art. Any attempt to do so is an admission of your own lack of vision and creativity. Art isn't math or science. There's no checklist you can use to define it. There's no proof you can apply to qualify it. There's no test you can run to value it.

Now, just because something is art, doesn't mean it's good. And just because something is good, doesn't mean it's art. And just because something is good art, doesn't mean it's going to be recognized by the art community as such. In fact, most of the best art was widely panned during it's introduction, and only through time has it's importance and value been accepted. This is both liberating and debilitating to artists. Great artists don't always find recognition in their lifetime. Great artists don't always find recognition ever. And sometimes bad artists find recognition during their lifetime, and only to be eventually forgotten (Thomas Kinkade anyone?). So this allows anyone wanting to be an artist a valid reason to continue to pursue their vision even under the crushing weight of constant failure, and serves as a cautionary tale to any artist who may believe they have found success.

So, my point is, if you're trying to approach art like you would science, economics, or math, with rigid precision and dependable formulation, you will fail to understand it. You will only truly begin to understand art, what it is, and what makes it valuable, once you immerse yourself in it. And that process may take you a lifetime or longer. Art is the most difficult thing to understand that humanity has invented, and impossible to master. If you want a challenge, become a theoretical physicist. If you want a guarantee at failure where success can be crippling and humiliation can be liberating, become an artist.

Also, photography is a bad place to approach art from. There are no, and never have been, any great masters of art in the photography realm. There is no photographic equivalent to Van Gogh, Picasso, Michelangelo, etc. There have been some great photographers over the century plus that photography has been around, but there has yet to emerge a true master artist in the field. It's just too new of an art form. And I've found that approaching art is easiest through the masters. They're kind of the key that opens the door to that world.

I agree with almost all of that. However I differ on whether there are any great masters of art in the photography realm, and do so by your own criteria. Of the top ten prices paid for photographs at auction, which range from $2,929,000 to $4,338,500, only one was based on its historical value as a photograph. The rest were fine art gallery pieces take in recent decades that used the photographic medium. So while their greatness hasn't match painting financially, the price of a single photograph is capable of attaining a value of well over $4m without any photographic context, which puts it into a valuation comparable with other serious artistic pieces. Whether those photographs are subjectively successful as photographs, is of course irrelevant.

 

[MattKing]

Art in Photography?
Isn't that a guy with a Yellow Hasselblad?

 

[MartinCrabtree]

Since September, I've posted 31 threads. How many consititute a "spate of controversial threads attempting to bait members"? Perhaps it's just people of your ilk.

Regards, Art

People of my ilk? And just what may that be?

 

[jim10219]

I agree with almost all of that. However I differ on whether there are any great masters of art in the photography realm, and do so by your own criteria. Of the top ten prices paid for photographs at auction, which range from $2,929,000 to $4,338,500, only one was based on its historical value as a photograph. The rest were fine art gallery pieces take in recent decades that used the photographic medium. So while their greatness hasn't match painting financially, the price of a single photograph is capable of attaining a value of well over $4m without any photographic context, which puts it into a valuation comparable with other serious artistic pieces. Whether those photographs are subjectively successful as photographs, is of course irrelevant.

I never listed price as a part of my criteria for greatness. Money is what investors judge art by. It's not how fellow artists and art historians judge art. Would Beethoven's Ninth Symphony be poor art if it were played on the radio for free?

In any case, I'm just saying that there is no photographic equivalent to the masters from other realms. As great as Ansel Adams, HCB, Robert Capa, Edward Weston, and all of them were, they just don't have the cultural impact of Van Gogh, Picasso, Beethoven, Mozart, Shakespeare, Dante, Michelangelo, Rodin, etc.

 

[blockend]

I never listed price as a part of my criteria for greatness. Money is what investors judge art by. It's not how fellow artists and art historians judge art. Would Beethoven's Ninth Symphony be poor art if it were played on the radio for free?

In any case, I'm just saying that there is no photographic equivalent to the masters from other realms. As great as Ansel Adams, HCB, Robert Capa, Edward Weston, and all of them were, they just don't have the cultural impact of Van Gogh, Picasso, Beethoven, Mozart, Shakespeare, Dante, Michelangelo, Rodin, etc.

Fellow artists are mostly broke and art historians deal in the retrospective, which only leaves market value as an arbiter of living artists. As I pointed out, the highest values are not for historically important photographs but contemporary ones. This means photography is seen as a viable, living, creative medium, not just traded on rarity value.

Photography is best evaluated in comparison with other print media like etching and woodcuts which offer theoretically limitless reproduction, or limited editions, rather than one-off paintings, sculpture and installation. For example the highest price I can find for a Picasso engraving is $3m, whereas the biggest price on a Picasso painting is $180m.

 

[MattKing]

People of my ilk? And just what may that be?

Art should probably put that phrase into quotes. It came from another of his threads, where that and some other extremely virulent posts were directed at him because he linked to a story that he agreed with that featured Nikon and some short sighted choices in product promotion.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

I had nothing to do with that. I simply stated (correctly) his threads of late had been controversial in nature. He appears to be seeking confrontation. Free world go for it but leave me out of it. My post was not meant to inflame nor instigate simply my observation. If it was taken that way my sincere apology.

 

[Jeff Bradford]

Art is an intentional depiction. Subject and context may be abstract. What anyone besides the artist thinks of it is merely commentary and critique.