Yeah, but is it art?

[NJH]

I think you mean Occam's razor

 

[NJH]

Quote from NJH
Unless you are only doodling, I would dare say that using a pencil to create a work of art requires alot more effort & training than a DSLR.
And your description of using a 35mm film camera ignores the really hard work of developing and printing the results. Very poor analogies.

The point I'm trying to make is that as photography becomes easier, there is less creative effort expended to get the final result. From the public's viewpoint, less effort equates with less artistic value. It took alot of proselytizing by Adams, Steiglitz and others to get photography accepted in the artistic world; and that achievement is now reversing thanks in large part to the perceived ease of [digital] photography.

I still don't agree with either point, most of the public or at least the people I know think the Tracey Emin's work is thrown together in seconds, doesn't stop her being probably our countries most famous modern artist.

On the point of doodling you should see a lot of the pictures taken on phones by people who are not photographers, my wife is one such person no thought or care given to composition at all half the time she doesn't even hold the camera straight or steady. She must be up to a couple of thousand such images by now many of which end up on facebook like everyone else. When talking about snapshooting with 35mm you also forget that for decades most folks not interested in photography as an art just dropped film into a lab and let their machines do all the work, by deriding the supposed ease of DSLR you are also ignoring all the work done by the engineers and scientists who designed and developed the cameras and image processing software. I see no evidence at all that taken as a sum there is less or more technical work done in one or another its just in different places and times. What is clear from here and elsewhere is an incredible snobbery surrounding analog techniques, anyone who thinks that having the technical ability to work with analog materials somehow makes them more of an artist is just plain deluded.

 

[jovo]

... anyone who thinks that having the technical ability to work with analog materials somehow makes them more of an artist is just plain deluded.

My wife is an artist. Most people assume, correctly, that that means she is a painter. Despite those here who simply will not accept definitions as even possible, 'artist' should be defined. There are martial artists, con artists, conceptual artists, recording artists (really? even with autotune?), and culinary arts, language arts and the list continues. So, for me at least, (my white man's, eurocentric, English speaking self) an 'artist' is one whose accomplishments go beyond quotidian craftsmanship. In photography, when that happens with film or a sensor, and the results please MY aesthetic sense (just me....white, eurocentric, English speaking ME), the maker of that work is an artist who is practicing their 'art'.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

+1

 

[ME Super]

+2

 

[CatLABS]

My wife is an artist. Most people assume, correctly, that that means she is a painter. Despite those here who simply will not accept definitions as even possible, 'artist' should be defined. There are martial artists, con artists, conceptual artists, recording artists (really? even with autotune?), and culinary arts, language arts and the list continues. So, for me at least, (my white man's, eurocentric, English speaking self) an 'artist' is one whose accomplishments go beyond quotidian craftsmanship. In photography, when that happens with film or a sensor, and the results please MY aesthetic sense (just me....white, eurocentric, English speaking ME), the maker of that work is an artist who is practicing their 'art'.

You seem to be mixing up Fine art and Applied art.

HR Giger, studied Applied arts, he is gifted, makes work that impacts lots of people, has alot to say about the world with his work, yet he is a craftsman, a designer.
Stephen Shore on the other hand, studied, and has been teaching fine arts since the first class of photography in a fine arts educational institition. He has little to nothing to say about the world (his words now mine)He makes boring (as in uninteresting), technically mediocre work, which has a minor impact on a very small circle of people yet he is an artist.

The definitions, here, are not the issue, because art is not a quantifiable value, even though some relentlessly try to comodify it.

 

[jovo]

I am not mixing up anything.

 

[CatLABS]

I am not mixing up anything.

You must be right then.