Random tidbit
Is Photography Art? A great soccer manager, who, when asked whether football was a matter of life and death replied. "Nothing as trivial as that!"
FEATURED COMMENT: Eric Fredine wrote, "Well, mostly I was thinking that I don't care much one way or the other what you call me or what I do. Practically, I suppose I do care if one definition might make my work worth more than another ;)."
FEATURED COMMENT: Eric Fredine wrote, "Well, mostly I was thinking that I don't care much one way or the other what you call me or what I do. Practically, I suppose I do care if one definition might make my work worth more than another ;)."
posted by gravitas et nugalis at 10/22/2006 05:49:00 PM
5 Comments:
Is Photography Art?
Does this question need an answer?
In fact, the real question that is being pondered in some quarters of the art world is "Are photographers artists?"
Consider the following:
The London's prestigious Tate Gallery has no department of photography surveying the whole history of the medium. It does not buy photographs by ‘photographers’, only photographs by ‘artists’, which are not called ‘photographs’ but ‘pieces’.
In the art market, major contemporary photographers, such as Robert Adams or Lee Friedlander - because they are perceived as photographers, emanating from the photographic tradition - do not command the prices of figures such as Thomas Struth or Cindy Sherman who, a mere generation or half generation later, are perceived as ‘artists’, emanating from the contemporary art tradition.
In other words, photography is only a medium for use by 'artists' - not an 'art' in and of itself. Kind of like photography as paint.
Well, mostly I was thinking that I don't care much one way or the other what you call me or what I do. Practically, I suppose I do care if one definition might make my work worth more than another ;).
I think it's pretty clear that some photographers are artists and some are not. One definition of "art" in my dictionary is: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination in the production of aesthetic objects. Some photography is aesthetically appealing and some simply is not. I guess this might make it a bit difficult for the people, whomever they are deemed, that decide whether or not photography, as a medium, is an art. One man's beautiful is another man's ugly... Personally speaking, an aesthetically pleasing and emotionally moving photograph effects me in the pretty much the same way a beautiful painting or a great song or musical composition does so I do consider it ART. Sometimes it's really hard to believe that this question is still being debated.
Another thing that popped into my head: Do those people that decide whether or not photography is art, as in the curators at the Tate Gallery in London, have trouble with the fact that the end product, the photograph, could maybe be considered as NOT being a direct result of a creative imagination. What you see in a photographic image wasn't hatched in the deep dark recesses of an artistic mind. Could they see it as inherently unoriginal therefore unartistic? Just thinking out loud a bit here. Probably very unoriginal thoughts but I had 'em nonetheless.
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