why is it that you think 99% of photography isn't considered an art form?

removed account4 · Aug 10, 2021

faberryman said:
Maybe some contemporary photographers are just Pictoralists reimagined.

I don't think the Pictorialists ever went away. Photography has had an Identity Crisis from the beginning and I think it still does. And to answer my own question about why photography departments are segregated from the rest of the arts departments (at schools or in museums) I think it's because of the identity crisis. No one knows, especially these days, if it's graphic design or illustration or craftwork or painting or science or something else .. its just photography. No one really knows how to talk about it in relation to itself, its always in relation to something else that it's being put up against. I think once the great schism gets even bigger maybe photography and the people who practice it will know what it is.

MattKing · Aug 10, 2021

faberryman said:
Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between well thought out and lipstick on a pig. With respect to contemporary photography, I really don't feel qualified to make the call. I am mostly just puzzled.

One thing I have noticed is that a lot of contemporary photography is staged. For example, take the tableaux of Gregory Clewsdon, the head of the Yale photography MFA program we previously referred to. From what I read, he sometimes uses up to 100 assistants to set up the scenes. It seems to me the creative aspect is imaging the scene and then realizing it. Taking the photo is merely to document what he has created. I wonder if William Eggleston thought up that tricycle image, and then got a tricycle, set the scene up, and photographed it. I don't really know. Maybe it doesn't matter. The Pictorialists were hammered by Group F/64 for setting up those allegory scenes. Maybe some contemporary photographers are just Pictoralists reimagined.

Jeff Wall and Conceptual Art: https://gagosian.com/artists/jeff-wall/
Seeing many of his originals is really different than seeing illustrations on the web.
At one time he was one of the largest individual users of Cibachrome materials - the ones designed for backlighting.
In many ways, the Conceptual Art people are more like cinematographers than photographers.

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 10, 2021

Many try something different to separate themselves from the crowd. Most of us settle for an "attaboy" now and then.

faberryman · Aug 10, 2021

MattKing said:
Jeff Wall and Conceptual Art: https://gagosian.com/artists/jeff-wall/
Seeing many of his originals is really different than seeing illustrations on the web.
At one time he was one of the largest individual users of Cibachrome materials - the ones designed for backlighting.
In many ways, the Conceptual Art people are more like cinematographers than photographers.

I was thinking more along the lines of considering photographs of Christo's fabric wrapped monuments and landscapes as the art.

why is it that you think 99% of photography isn't considered an art form?

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