Does photography equal art in your mind?

[fotoworx]

Does photography equal art in your mind?

Do you consider photography as art?

[kitacanon]

What else could it be?
moving on...
What kind of art?

[birdfromboat]

printmaking is art. Photography is collection of photons. better get some good ones or you are not going to have what you need to make art later on, when you get to the printmaking part. tell me I 'm wrong, tell me I'm right, I don't care. No one can tell me when I feel like I am doing art but me, and that part comes when I start manipulating the final print.

[Mosca]

It depends on who is doing the photography.

[sjones]

Some photography yes, some no.

[PhotosGuy]

If this is art...

http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2008/08/giant-inflatable-dog-turd-escapes.html

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/09/15/wim-delvoye-worlds-most-badass-artist/

[birdfromboat]

did it create an emotion in the viewer? I was quite......moved.

[izatt82]

If this is art...

http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2008/08/giant-inflatable-dog-turd-escapes.html

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/09/15/wim-delvoye-worlds-most-badass-artist/


yeah i am with photosguy if this is art ^^ well then

[rdenney]

No. Photography has more uses than the creation of art. It is often used as a means of keeping a record of visual details, with no intent to convey an artistic purpose, and no reception of artistic intent by the viewer.

An example: A novel can be art, as we will all agree. But is the ingredients statement for a jar of peanut butter art? What about the title above that says "Canon DIgital Photography Forums". Is that artistic writing? Of course not. It was not intended to be and nobody would take it as such. That is also true of a photograph I might make of a mechanical part before taking it apart so that I can remember where the bits go. The drawing I make to accomplish the same purpose may be done with a high level of craft and skill and still not be art.

So, photography does not equal art. A photograph can be art.

Rick "thinking art is defined as such by the artist's intent, and by a receiver's acceptance as such" Denney

[Jaymz]

I have nothing useful to contribute to this thread. But I wanted to say, Rick I always love reading your posts, always well thought out and 'spoken' with a high level of diplomacy.

[Christopher Steven b]

I think that photography shares sufficient resemblances with other processes we standardly refer to as 'art', that it indeed is a form of art.
[see: wittgenstein re: family resemblance, games].

I tend not to see photography as a collection of photons just as I tend not to see drawing as consisting in the collection of graphite particles that I can use to draw with. But I really like the suggestion that--presuming photography is an art--the art part isn't necessarily occurring while one pushes the shutter. It often happens that I will shoot something, convinced by intuition that there is something there; I will abandon this image for a month or two; and then there is suddenly a moment of inspiration; and while none of the recorded pix-ure el-ements have changed, my way of seeing it has. I will see this disregarded photo anew and I will make a slight edit + crop; and I will make it public in some small way. I don't know if I am saying that there is something artful about that moment of seeing, but that moment seems to be a better candidate than the moment of shooting--at least in my case.

[Christopher Steven b]

I like the way you think, Rick.

[tzalman]

If this is art...

http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2008/08/giant-inflatable-dog-turd-escapes.html

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/09/15/wim-delvoye-worlds-most-badass-artist/

I can't believe it! They described my photography perfectly:
"...interweaving, diverse, not to say conflictive emphases and a broad spectrum of items to form a dynamic exchange of parallel and self-eclipsing spatial and temporal zones."

[FlyingPhotog]

If it draws together two or more people (so there can be disagreement) it's art... ;)

[John_B]

James.D,
It all depends on your definitions!
ex. what is your definition of art? ???
ex2. what is your definition of photography? ???

According to Merriam-Webster online Dictionary the definition of Art (as a Noun) is :
1: skill acquired by experience, study, or observation
2 a: a branch of learning
3: an occupation requiring knowledge or skill
4 a: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art%5B2%5D)

and according to Merriam-Webster online Dictionary the definition of Photography is :
: the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface (as film or a CCD chip) (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/photography)

So for me, Photography is art ;)

[TheGreatOg]

Photography has more uses than the creation of art. It is often used as a means of keeping a record of visual details, with no intent to convey an artistic purpose, and no reception of artistic intent by the viewer.

Photography is twofold. On the one hand it's a tool for documenting. Its capturing a moment of time, a memory, a face, a shaft of light, a humorous scene, an event, a document for record, etc.

On the other hand a camera is an artists tool. A fancy and instant paint brush. Used to create a dynamic image that has the intention and purpose to be viewed as "art".

The best photographers/photos that I've seen have managed to successfully merge the two ideas into one. A snapshot of an old car is just that, nothing but a picture of a car any man with a camera can take. Cool, it serves its purpose. But a good or great photographer will shoot the car in such a way as to make me WANT to look at it. To enjoy looking at it. It's no longer just a car, it's interesting. It's art.

If you want to shoot snapshots, go for it. But if you want to make great images you need to apply more effort and skill than the click of a button. Why else go to all of the effort to learn all of the controls on your camera and the variables of good exposure if all you want is a snapshot?

If all of the magic of your shots is done in photoshop, are you a photographer or a digital artist? I believe there's both overlap and a difference between the two. That's a topic for another thread.

In the end, make photography what you want it to be. There's no shortage of good or great photographers anymore. The world won't suffer or end if another person decides just to get snapshots. Make photography a venue for your vision and pleasure and leave the rest to philosophy. ;)

[PhotosGuy]

"...interweaving, diverse, not to say conflictive emphases and a broad spectrum of items to form a dynamic exchange of parallel and self-eclipsing spatial and temporal zones." Don't you just love those guys? Most of the time I see verbiage like that & I look at what they're describing & think, "WTH makes you think I'd pay money for that?"

[gymell]

I don't think photography is art. It's a means to create art.

[rdenney]

James.D,
It all depends on your definitions!
ex. what is your definition of art? ???
ex2. what is your definition of photography? ???


Webster can truly be annoying.

The term "art" is used in several different contexts to mean several different things. When I say "state of the art", I mean art in the skill sense. Webster seems to think that people mean any such skill when applied aesthetically is art in the aesthetic sense.

A dictionary is, of course, just a place where lexicographers (or committees of them) write down what they think people mean when they use a word.

Art in the aesthetic sense, which is as its used here, generally defies definitions based on how it is produced, or even how well it is produced. All attempts to write down those definitions in terms of how it is produced end up in silliness, as we saw back up the thread. Reading that blather makes me recall Richard Feynmann: "If you can't explain it in plain English, you probably don't understand it yourself."

In plain English, art is an aesthetic presentation that its creator intends as art, and that the receiver accepts as art. So, if I make a photograph and hang it on the wall as art, and you look at it and have an artistic reaction to it, then it's art. C. S. Lewis explored this issue in his Experiment in Criticism, where he argued that a critic should evaluate art in terms of how it is received, rather than how it is presented. The latter says too much about the critic's tastes, rather than considering how given art might affect the receiver (and thus connecting willing receivers with compatible creators).

And in plain English, a photograph is an image made by projecting light onto a sensitized surface. I see nothing in that definition that necessarily lines up with the definition I have proposed for art.

I recall a story about the use of ultra-large-format Polaroid materials to make 1:1 archival images of paintings for preservation. There is no question that those who performed this work were highly skilled in their craft, and even that for that application they represented the state of the art in photography at the time. Yet what they produced was not art, it was a record of art. Anyone looking at the resulting image and having an artistic response to it would be responding so something the painter intended, not to something the photographic archivist intended. The archivist's role, and rightly so, was to stay out of the way of that interchange.

If I'm a hack and what I intend as art isn't received as such by anybody, then a critic can accuse me of not being an artist. But if someone, in looking at my pictures, reacts to them in an artistic way with an emotional response, inspiration, awe, or whatever, then the critic cannot insist that it is not art. The critic can, at most, say he's not impressed by it or he doesn't like it or that it shows poor skills, but those are a matter of taste or technical commentary that don't undermine its status as art.

Artists are, of course, good at evoking that response from people even with images (however produced) that are utterly banal. I saw a work of art yesterday in the lobby of a concert hall that comprised a sheet of Styrofoam insulation that had a "Habitat for Humanity" logo on it in addition to the normal logos and markings. No! It was a painting of a sheet of insulation. Was that art?

Rick "who can answer that question" Denney

[chauncey]

You pose this question on a photography website and then on a art website you will get different answers.
That might be because our tastes are more mainstream and our infinite ability to call $hit...$hit.

The artistic community would have a more eloquent way of describing their work.

I like what has written before me herein. :lol:

[nicksan]

As Rick already mentioned, it CAN be.

[birdfromboat]

if an object evokes an emotion in a human, is that what makes it an object of art? if thats so, the price tag on some of the 'art' I see is more artistic than the art, it creates revulsion and incredulity and sparks commentary and argument among multiple viewers, where a painting of styrofoam goes as unnoticed as, well, styrofoam.

[rdenney]

if an object evokes an emotion in a human, is that what makes it an object of art? if thats so, the price tag on some of the 'art' I see is more artistic than the art

:D:D:D

Rick "whose emotion is mostly jealousy" Denney

[Balliolman]

Yes! Why not?