Qualifying Photography as Art, or, Is Photography All It Can Be?

[johnastovall]

This was at Onlinephotographer and I think this featured comment has a very import message to most photographers who fall into the ontological trap Hardy-Vallee points out.


"Various artistic media have developed around the vehicular medium of photography, and people often wrongly believe that because someone uses photography that their works must conform to certain canons, and anything else is a bastard form."

Qualifying Photography as Art, or, Is Photography All It Can Be?

We can expand our photographic expression more by thinking about Photography in the broader context of Art rather than shutter speeds and 'f' stops.

A great picture starts a long time before you every pick up the camera.

[SilverShooter]

A very heavy read. I certainly think that photography as a medium, doesn't preclude or imply that a work is artistic. I took the time to view some of Thomas Demand's works, which are said to be highly regarded by art critics (at least by one of the authors referenced above). His works appear at MOMA. Like the works of many other contemporary artist, I find his to be totally obscure (prehaps through my ignorance).

Art, to me, is in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't require long words or convoluted use of language to be appreciated. It either succeeds in reaching its audience or it doesn't. It matters not at all how it is produced. I think it may not matter what the intent of the artist was, at least at the time of its creation. If, in its final form, it brings communication between the artist and his audience, I think that's its purpose.

Please forgive my lack of reverence for those skinny folks who wear black shirts and slacks, and who endeavour to explain artist meaning to the rest of us. I'm reminded of the real loss created by those types when they reviewed the early works of Georgia O Keefe, declaring them to be overtly sensual, sending her away from her own style and into a period of less creativity than she might have exhibited had they simply not commented.

[Duffy Pratt]

The important thing to this guy is not art, but art criticism. In his upside down view of the world, the point of art is to give a starting point for the critical discussion. But there should be no mistake, the critical discussion is what is important in contemporary art, not the art itself.

Tom Wolfe had it entirely right. For an antidote to this bs, read his "The Painted Word."

Duffy