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Author Topic: Photography is to art what golf is to sport  (Read 64342 times)

Rob C

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Photography is to art what golf is to sport
« Reply #20 on: August 07, 2007, 06:02:16 pm »

Ray - Picasso? Come on, you have got to be kidding, no? Dali for the modern lot, but you have to go back a couple of centuries or more to find the cream. This is applicable to the entire world, as far as my own opinion goes - I might make an exception for the Impressionists and their post- members too, but as for today - forget it. All bullshit and money.

Thinking fondly of my youth and photography and Rome: shortly after seeing La Dolce Vita I had occasion to go back to Rome and spend a week with a relative of my mother´s who lived there with his two sons (the mother, with whom I´d fallen in love with at the age of 11 when she must have been about 30 had died in a Fiat...). We were invited to a birthday party at some restaurant in the city and I went along with the Exakta which I had at the time, and a small grey Braun flash which I used to prize. After dinner, and possibly smashed, we went down the Via Veneto in a group with yours truly playing the paparazzo in real time - in the Roman sense of the period - and one of the prettier girls and her boyfriend played along with the game waving their arms at me and yelling no foto, no foto. It was all very amusing at the time and I felt I was actually in a movie. I also spent some time walking up to total strangers (girls, natch) sitting at those cafe tables that bordered the street and snapping away... they loved it, not really to my surprise; you had to be young and alive in the 60s or you might as well have been dead.

God, how I wish I could have those times back again. And the negatives.

Ciao - Rob C

Ray

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« Reply #21 on: August 08, 2007, 06:19:46 pm »

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Ray - Picasso? Come on, you have got to be kidding, no?

Yes, definitely kidding, Rob   .

It sure is a shame you lost those negatives. How did you manage that?  I don't believe I've ever lost any negatives (or positives), ever, except the first thousand or so digital negatives I took with my first digital camera, the Canon D60, but that wasn't really a losing but a deliberate dumping to save hard drive space on my laptop, naively believing the 16 bit tif conversions I did with Zoombrowser contained all the information there was and that hanging on to the RAWs served no purpose.

The world has changed a lot since the sixties. Returning to venues years later can be a bit disappointing. I visited Italy a couple of years ago during what I believed to be the off-peak season, winter/spring. It sure didn't seem like off-peak to me.

If that was off-peak, I don't think I'd like to be there during the busy season.  
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mmurph

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« Reply #22 on: August 08, 2007, 08:51:01 pm »

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it strikes me that the serious pursuit of photography - as opposed to happy snapping - brings with it the risk of a certain high-mindedness, a certain hauteur of would-be auteurs.

I enjoyed your post. But it seems to me that *any* discussion of the limits of certain photographs threatens people here, and they call that elitist.

I have never criticized anyones image online. I purposedly *never* participate in forums where people post their images. Basically, I figure what in the *blank* is the point of asking absolute strangers for a critique of your images to begin with, unless you are an absolute beginner?  

But to go back to the golf analogy.  I enjoy watching Tiger Woods play. And I have no problem with duffers who shoot 167 and enjoy themselves. I doubt anyone does.

But I truly hope they understand the difference between their skill level and that of Woods.  And I have *no* desire to go out and watch those guys play - maybe their buddies or wives or moms do, but not me.  And if they organize a tournament and put themselves on TV, purporting to be better than they are, I think they leave themselves open to criticism - they have entered the "game" at a certain level, where critique comes along with the territory.

I think writing is a better analogy all around. I don't care if you make lists, or write in your diary. I don't really care if you blog about your life, or publish your thoughts on MySpace, though you are putting certain things out in public for comment.

But when a work is published as a book, for example, I don't think it is elitist to call a book garbage, or at least say "I can't read this thing, I am hopelessly bored/confused/indifferent".  You always run the risk of being just plan wrong - maybe with something like Kerouac.    

But after being a serious reader and writer for 30 years, I think you can rather easily tell something with redeeming value from complete trash - like a Stephen King novel!        (joke, joke)

It is like writing a performance review at work, or grading a students paper. You work hard to get it right because you know your judgement is important. Yes, it is somewhat subjective, but the stuff clusters pretty clearly.  The "F"'s have a lot more in common with like each other than they do with the "A"'s. And making those judgements is part of the role you take on as a teacher or supervisor.  

Michael
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Rob C

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« Reply #23 on: August 10, 2007, 03:50:00 pm »

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Yes, definitely kidding, Rob   .

It sure is a shame you lost those negatives. How did you manage that?  I don't believe I've ever lost any negatives (or positives), ever, except the first thousand or so digital negatives I took with my first digital camera, the Canon D60, but that wasn't really a losing but a deliberate dumping to save hard drive space on my laptop, naively believing the 16 bit tif conversions I did with Zoombrowser contained all the information there was and that hanging on to the RAWs served no purpose.

The world has changed a lot since the sixties. Returning to venues years later can be a bit disappointing. I visited Italy a couple of years ago during what I believed to be the off-peak season, winter/spring. It sure didn't seem like off-peak to me.

If that was off-peak, I don't think I'd like to be there during the busy season. 
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Ray

The truth is worse: I didn´t lose them, I destroyed them.

I left the UK in ´81 and had to decide what to do with literally about ten feet (length) of squeezed-together negative files. Some I sold off to old clients and others which meant something to me beyond just work I kept for transfer to Spain. Unfortunately, as most of the work was model related, and we are talking about stuff dating from the 60s and 70s, there weren´t all that many model releases to go with the pics and nobody had ever imagined that there would be an art world out there interested in such material.

One of the shoots, the loss of which which I lament to this day, was with Susan Shaw who did the Smirnoff librarian commercial. It was for an Irish company called Barbour Threads and we shot it in Auchendrain, a preserved old group of buildings in Argyle. It was supposed to look like an old Irish cottage of long ago and the girl wore very revealing peasant blouses, was barefooted etc. etc. and the calendar, in B/W!!! was beautiful. Sadly, the negs for it and the next one for the same company using anothr model call Jaleh, did vanish - I doubt very much that I threw them out. I don´t even have a copy of either calendar. Life sucks, sometimes.

The same holds for many of my colour calendars too. The problem with living in Spain and trying to do/control productions split betwen here and the UK were quite grave. I ended up not getting transparencies back from printers, sometimes because I forgot and even sometimes because they went bust. Even big ones like Kynoch Press. Best to forget all that - this is another time, a very different ballgame.

Ciao - Rob C
« Last Edit: August 10, 2007, 03:52:36 pm by Rob C »
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nineinone

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« Reply #24 on: December 12, 2007, 02:22:49 am »

hmm, I couldn't disagree more. I dont see how photography can be any less "art" than any other medium. People get hung up probably by the fact that photography 'starts out' with "more" than say a blank canvas with painting, but that doesnt matter, because its all about where you END UP, not where you start. And, you could even argue that its way harder to start with way too much and then have to hone it down, as opposed to starting from nothing, but being allowed to then place only what you want there.

Some people say hip hop is somehow "less" musical. But that just means they dont understand it. When they can figure out the difference between the way someone like Sean "P. Diddy" Combs moronically takes a sample from an original song, as opposed to say how someone like Portishead uses it, then they'll see the "art" in it. Hip Hop/Trip Hop have numerous examples where the re-sampled hook not only sounds better than the original, but where the finished 3-dimensional "usage" of the sample is incorporated into an even better overall song.

Or look at someone like Joseph Cornell -who always took "original" found material and made his little boxes with it. His boxes are some of the most beautiful artworks of all time, and none of it did he technically "make" all by himself. Similarly, in this sense a photographer "takes" what he sees around him, and (hopefully) transforms it just like other great artists, into something better. All artists "borrow" something from somewhere, nothing is truly 100% "original." Those who think a painter is somehow more "original" are kidding themselves, that painter probably "steals" from 10 other painters's styles, and probably learned in the 1st place as an apprentice, as is the tradition.

Lastly, golf is just a bad analogy because it is as elitist and "rare" as a sport can get. How many people play golf, exactly? Photography, on the other hand, is now everywhere, done by everyone, and usually, badly. Its probably more like soccer or basketball, where everyone plays it, but only very few are really, really good at it. Or, maybe it is a good analogy, just that most people are really playing mini-golf, not the PGA version.  Perhaps that, in the end, is why some people see it as somehow a lesser art, because "anyone" can do it. Well, if thats the case, then just have the guts to let Uncle Hank shoot your wedding photos....me, I'll just take Cartier-Bresson, thanks.
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jjj

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Photography is to art what golf is to sport
« Reply #25 on: December 12, 2007, 03:42:26 am »

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I'm not saying that golf is not a sport, but I am saying that it is a much less demanding sport than other sports - after all, it's a sport that can be played by semi-invalids if they have enough money for a golf cart.
I've seen mountain bike racers with only one arm and keeping up with the other riders. And Cross country Mountain biking is one hell of a demanding sport.
I also have a photo of my grandad sitting attop the podium of a swimming event. He had one arm missing [got run over by a train when he was little!] and there was no disabled categories in those days. So I'd be less patronising about invalids if I were you.


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And I respectfully suggest, as a guy whose main "creative" expression is photography, that photography too is an art, but not on the same level as performing arts, nor on the same level as plastic arts that conjure up something out of formless raw materials.  The most inspiring photography is probably infused with artistic sensibility and insight, and it may well even trigger the sort of reflections that are the hallmark of great art. 

But let's be frank - it is art "lite".
I say this was philosophy lite.


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Photography is a pleasurable pursuit for all who press the shutter.  It can become a voyage of exploration and discovery for those who practise is purposefully.  And it can yield impressive "artistic" results for the lucky few, but with much less talent and investment of time and effort than the classical music, dance et al.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=131611\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
What utter ignorant nonsense, those lucky few are probably very talented and work very hard at making their 'luck'. Also having done dance, I'd also say the same thing about those who are good at dance and photography. There are those who have natural talent and a large chunk of it comes effortlessly to them and there are those who have to really work at it. But in either case to excel in one's field, you have to put a lot of effort in. Having said that, you don't measure the quality of the end result by the effort put in, you only really measure the end result by the performance in the case of dance or the photograph in photography.


A photographer who creates the entire scene in front of him/herself, say Gregory Crewdson, is also quite different from from the sort of  photographer who simply records a bit of the scene presented in front of them as is. Even Crewdson's work must be art even by your spurious reasoning, as so much 'effort' goes into his images. And so much money is then paid for the end results too.
I'd take a  guess that it's yourself are describing yourself as 'art lite' and daubing others with your lack of 'art'. It sounds like the typical sort of ropey reasoning by someone who simply doesn't understand what they are talking about.
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jjj

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« Reply #26 on: December 12, 2007, 03:51:30 am »

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Like Rob, I left sport behind when I grew up, yet I think there's a type of ballet going on in rugby and Aussie Rules which could be interesting for the photographer, though I have to admit I'd find a ballet of Swan Lake with all male dancers, with hairy legs, probably more interesting than the ballet of a football match   .
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I saw Mathew Bourne's Adventures in Motion Pictures did Swan Lake about ten years back with a male swans. It was exceptionally good, but I don't recall any hairy legs though as they were still wearing tights!
I believe that it is still touring, so if you get a chance to see it, it's well worth seeing.
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Jonathan Wienke

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« Reply #27 on: December 13, 2007, 08:20:20 am »

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Reflecting on the thread about the 101 cliches of photography, it strikes me that the serious pursuit of photography - as opposed to happy snapping - brings with it the risk of a certain high-mindedness, a certain hauteur of would-be auteurs.

And it occurs to me that a lot of the discussion of this ilk is predicated on the notion that serious photographers aspire to being serious artists or at least to creating serious art.

As far as I'm concerned, photography is to art what golf is to sport. 
...

And I respectfully suggest, as a guy whose main "creative" expression is photography, that photography too is an art, but not on the same level as performing arts, nor on the same level as plastic arts that conjure up something out of formless raw materials.  The most inspiring photography is probably infused with artistic sensibility and insight, and it may well even trigger the sort of reflections that are the hallmark of great art. 

But let's be frank - it is art "lite".

Photography is a pleasurable pursuit for all who press the shutter.  It can become a voyage of exploration and discovery for those who practise is purposefully.  And it can yield impressive "artistic" results for the lucky few, but with much less talent and investment of time and effort than the classical music, dance et al.

This is incredibly stupid and insulting twaddle; an argument that was old, tired, and discredited well before color film photography became popular. If one aspires to go beyond the level of the casual happy snapper, then one must learn the effects of lighting, focus, aperture, depth of field, exposure, focal length, ISO, color management (camera, monitor, and printer profiling, configuring all settings so that all profiles are used correctly, as well as the effects of various rendering intents when doing profile conversions), RAW conversion, noise removal, sharpening, curves, creative color adjustments, B&W conversion techniques, (not to mention many other post-processing steps and Photoshop operation in general) as well as the pros and cons of the various printers, inksets, and paper choices, and how all of those factors affect the final print. All of these things must be mastered to some degree before one can translate one's artistic vision to a print.

Then there is the physical skill required to capture the "decisive moment" in many areas of photography. Capturing a fleeting expression on a child's face, a trotting horse with all four hooves off the ground, a bat making contact with a baseball, or just the right pose as the model walks down the runway all require split-second timing, and a considerable amount of practice to achieve consistently.

And then there is the artistic side, which utilizes the technical knowledge of photography and the physical skill required to operate the camera competently, and uses those tools to take a subject through the process of capture, post-processing, and printing. To expand on Ansel Adams' musical analogy, the selection of a subject can be compared to the composition of musical themes, composition and lighting to arranging those themes into a musical composition, capture to arranging and orchestrating the composition into a musical score, post-processing to performing the score, and printing to recording and mixing the performance into a final finished form. The photographic artist has as many opportunities for the expression of his artistic vision during each step of the process as does the musical artist, and both must develop considerable technical skill to fully realize their artistic intent into a final finished work. If one were to take the position that a photographer is less of an artist than a painter merely because a photograph is based on a concrete subject, then one must also conclude that a classical musician who plays from a printed score is less of an artist than a jazz musician who improvises most of the notes.
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HiltonP

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« Reply #28 on: December 13, 2007, 09:03:11 am »

I notice that our dedicated sports channels on satellite are increasingly being filled with ballroom dancing, darts and poker competitions. I guess it is therefore only a matter of time before someone takes a photo of the inside of his lens cap, in monochrome of course, and sells it as "art" for a million bucks . . .  
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walter.sk

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« Reply #29 on: December 13, 2007, 09:23:56 am »

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But let's be frank - it is art "lite".

Photography is a pleasurable pursuit for all who press the shutter.  It can become a voyage of exploration and discovery for those who practise is purposefully.  And it can yield impressive "artistic" results for the lucky few, but with much less talent and investment of time and effort than the classical music, dance et al.
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You are welcome to your opinions, but I see things somewhat differently.  I have been a composer and professor of musical composition and theory, and now am shooting for "fine art" prints for exhibit and sale.  I would like to make several personal observations:

1)  The ease of producing a work should have nothing to do with its artistic value.  Beethoven labored over each measure, reworking the score so much that he actually had to paste new paper over some measures.  Handel knocked out the Messiah in about 13 days.  Marcel Du Champ's "Fountain" is a urinal placed upside down, and was just as complete as a scene captured with a camera.  It is part of a genre of "Found Art," which has a modern equivalent in "Appropriated Art," where, for example, Richard Prince has made huge blowups of preexisting photographs by other photographers.  You can agree or disagree as to whether this is art, art lite or nonsense, but there are many serious artists, grounded in the history of art, who produce such art.  There are also people who view such art as serious art, whether or not you see the term "serious" as "hauteur" and "high-mindedness."

2)  I have made photographs since I was a child, and my goals have always been the same with photography as with musical composition: to interpret what I observe, to create a situation in which I can share it and communicate to others, and to move others, not necessarily in the same way I was moved in producing the work (music or print), but to evoke a response.

3)  Some photographic artists (Adams, Weston, etc.,) started with an existing scene but spent hours in a darkroom, transforming the scene into what was their vision.  Today, with Photoshop, the same possibilities for creative self expression exist.

4)  When I was teaching music, many of my colleagues dismissed jazz as music of "unschooled" musicians, with little or no artistic value.  Today, jazz is recognized as an art form, with complexity and nuance that many symphonically trained musicians are totally incapable of performing.

5)  All of the skills of photography, when learned, can produce adequate prints, but with a vision, often based on a lifetime of aesthetic observation and consideration, a photographer can produce a moving statement  In fact, some photographers enjoy the challenge of using a $20 Holga with light-leaks and plastic lens to produce an artistic statement.

6)  Is a poem written in a few minutes by a sensitive poet to be considered a lesser example of art than a poem that took anguishing hours of work to tailor?  I would think not, but again, you are welcome to your opinions.

7) A large number of painters, sculptors and other visual artists have made photographs, not merely to record their art, but as an artistic challenge to them, and they consider their photographs on the same level as their paintings or sculpture.

Some 40 years ago I attended a concert of avant guarde music.  I was a composer of Electronic Music at the time, but my challenge was to utilize form to structure the music.  This concert presented new work by many composers, in which form was incidental, or by chance, or so variable that no two performances of a given piece would be, or could be, similar.  I left the concert enraged, feeling that these composers had some interesting effects but were short-changing the audience and giving modern music "a bad name."  Ten years later, in front of a class of would-be musicians and composers, I realized that I was using a recording of one of those pieces and that it had become one of my favorites.

At that point I became much more humble, realizing I had not been able to open myself up to the music of that concert.  I soon adopted the stance that if there are serious people presenting their work, I may like it, dislike it, "get" it or not, agree with it or not, but not to judge it as "more than" or "lesser than" in terms of art.

Sorry for being so long-winded.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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« Reply #30 on: December 13, 2007, 03:04:24 pm »

Thank you, Walter.sk. That needed to be said.
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blansky

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« Reply #31 on: December 13, 2007, 03:56:26 pm »

I don't think what is "art" as all that complicated.

Art is any endeavor that uses the creative juices to accomplish. In short we must create something that wasn't there before.

The question becomes more complicated when we have to judge what is "good art" vs "bad art". And to be designated as one or the other usually but not always depends on the "artists" dedication to the craft of his particular field.

When a child does finger painting, that is art, because the child is using her creative instincts to create it. As she progresses and perhaps trains, the product will undoubtedly change and evolve but it doesn't diminish the creativity that was put into her original work.

For photographers, the differences between "snap shooters" and serious photographers, is that snap shooters generally arent interested in creating something but are merely capturing something. Serious photographers are thinking and composing and studying their subject matter to attain a certain result. How well they accomplish that task, is again, the subject of whether is to "good" or "bad".


Michael
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walter.sk

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« Reply #32 on: December 13, 2007, 04:34:20 pm »

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I
For photographers, the differences between "snap shooters" and serious photographers, is that snap shooters generally arent interested in creating something but are merely capturing something. Serious photographers are thinking and composing and studying their subject matter to attain a certain result. How well they accomplish that task, is again, the subject of whether is to "good" or "bad".
Michael
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But even this doesn't hold up under scrutiny of what has happened in photography as art.  As each style becomes reified into a set of rules for acceptance, some artists feel stultified, and seek to break through to a fresh  territory of expression.  An example that occurred in painting as well as photography, not necessarily at the same historic periods, was the rebellion against "Salon" art, which began to be perceived as  inordinate concern for form and composition through placement of the objects, and ultimately a cleverness that strangled expressive attempts.  The artists who felt that way took many different paths, some more controversial than others.  In photography, it resulted in a return to the "snapshot" in an attempt to get past the use of artistic principles that became formulaic.  

There are many collections of work out there in galleries and photobook form that renounced the Salon type of art in exchange for what the photographers felt was a more authentic expression of an idea or a socially relevant issue without being hampered by the "prettiness" of form-oriented work.

A viewer looking through such a collection of gas stations may wonder "where is the art...these are just snapshots," but the artist may have some other message to convey.

Me? I don't claim to like, or understand all of the types of art out there.  I have photographs that do very well in a Salon setting, and I also have ones that raise the question of "Is that photography?"  I have also written music based on 18th century forms, as well as experimental electronic music and musique concrete.  I'll listen to anything once, and go to galleries and museums to see what fellow photographers around the world are doing...just to see it.  Very often, a work I don't particularly like triggers an idea for shooting that pops into my head months later.

I just think it's great to be alive and surrounded by so many different approaches to art today.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2007, 04:37:25 pm by walter.sk »
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blansky

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« Reply #33 on: December 13, 2007, 04:52:17 pm »

But Walter, perhaps the initial photography of the gas stations was merely snapshots but what captures your interest today, is their compilation into a work of art. Namely the compilation or book. That is where the creative expression was exerted.

That being said if the anti salon people went out to do "snapshots" then those snap shots were meaningfully and deliberately done which fall into my definition of art. As opposed to Uncle Harry snapping pictures at a party.

Part of the human experience is to be drawn to what other people creatively do or perhaps more so to what they "did". What was a boring snapshot the day it was taken, could be endlessly fascinating to a viewer 30 years later. Though it may or may not be "art" unless as I mentioned above, deliberately compiled by someone.


Michael
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Nick Rains

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« Reply #34 on: December 13, 2007, 05:04:01 pm »

Quite probably the art/photo question will be bandied about for ever, and with no final answer. To those, including the OP, who question photography as art I say this - it's the person, not the medium, that determines whether a work is 'art'.

Painting is not art just because someone has bunged some finger paints on some paper, neither is writing just because someone has scribbled 5 lines that rhyme.

No medium has an a priori claim on being called art until someone actually makes it so.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2007, 05:04:59 pm by Nick Rains »
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Rob C

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« Reply #35 on: December 14, 2007, 12:19:21 pm »

There are never going to be definitive answers to the photography as art question, only personal opinions.

But there are always going to be more questions than answers, and one I´d like to pose here is this: if a child does a drawing, painting, doodle or whatever else it likes to do when asked to make a picture, can one claim that the child is creating art because the action is untutored, genuine and from within that child´s personal gamut of experience rather than being a mere distillation of other, observed forms of second-hand visual expression? For what it´s worth, I think it is art. However, when that child grows up and fails to develop its skills further, then the child is no longer an artist but merely just another person who has lost contact with his original possibilities.

Rob C

blansky

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« Reply #36 on: December 14, 2007, 02:37:03 pm »

I obviously agree as this is what I stated earlier.

My problem comes down to the term"artist". With my definition of art, then everyone is, or capable of, being an artist. Whether at any particular moment they are actually creating art is a different story.

It's much like "lover". Everybody can be one but we hardly go about calling ourselves that all day long.

If a person is in the process of creating art, then they are an artist. When they stop for dinner, they stop being an artist and begin to be an "eater?" Not sure on that one.

In my opinion the term "artist" has become a bit overdone. Much like the word arTIST.


Michael
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Rob C

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« Reply #37 on: December 14, 2007, 03:05:08 pm »

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I obviously agree as this is what I stated earlier.

My problem comes down to the term"artist". With my definition of art, then everyone is, or capable of, being an artist. Whether at any particular moment they are actually creating art is a different story.

It's much like "lover". Everybody can be one but we hardly go about calling ourselves that all day long.

If a person is in the process of creating art, then they are an artist. When they stop for dinner, they stop being an artist and begin to be an "eater?" Not sure on that one.

In my opinion the term "artist" has become a bit overdone. Much like the word arTIST.
Michael
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Sorry, Michael, I have to admit not reading all of the thread again - didn´t mean to rip off your thunder!

But to your later point: I think that the original child artist who loses the ability later on is, without question, no longer an artist; much the same could be laid at the doorstep of your ´lover´ who, as he/she ages (we have to be damn careful here!), or hits beta-blockers and other such mines, may well lose the right to the title lover.

Semantic niceties aside, I think that the true artist, in the sense that he can create valid art works, does not always produce art. I have had a similar wordy exchange with a friend who has a successful website, an art degree and prizes from a variety of artistic backers, not to mention a lot of gallery showings, and who is quite clear that being an artist does not mean that he always produces that which, to him, passes as art; sometimes he sees some of his works as no more than competent pictures.

How does one resolve that? Is it possible to resolve?

Ciao - Rob C

Neil Hunt

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Photography is to art what golf is to sport
« Reply #38 on: December 17, 2007, 05:15:59 pm »

This is more of a general comment, and definitely not having a go at anyone who has posted, but everytime I read something with 'art' in the title on a photography site, the overall tone always seems to be quite defensive. I suspect we photographers still have a chip on our collective shoulders and don't quite see ourselves as paid up members of the visual arts community.

At the end of the day do you really care about the label? I don't.

There are things still photography does better than any other medium - a long term documentry project, a story in a series of images, a single decisive moment of history or an iconic image. Thats enough to be going on with isn't it?
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Rob C

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« Reply #39 on: December 18, 2007, 07:35:38 am »

Neil it is certainly enough to be going on with, but it is also part and parcel of the mental journey upon which photographers seem to embark.

Self-questioning is only to be expected and I have to admit to asking the very same is-it-is-it-not-art questions within a professional photographic context way back in the late 60s, so this is a far from new experience, regardless of whether or not photographs sit within galleries; in those years, very few did and more´s the pity, leading to some long-lost negatives which would now be very valuable in terms of historical interest in fashions, places and yes, just as art for its own sake.

I am not going to be the falsely modest babe on this forum - I have lost quite a lot of my own stuff for this very lack of foresight and self-appreciation. Way back when, it was imagined that only US photography - dustbowl deprivation, Times Square junkies, kids admiring knives in shop windows etc.  was some sort of new-look artistic expression; the later European pictures (later not historically but in the collector´s sense of being good buys) were not really that publicly on display, or at least, if they were I do not remember them very clearly despite being an avid buyer and reader of photographic magazines. Books were a little beyond my wallet, much of the time.

So yes, art within photography is a valid question and of concern to most of us, I suspect, who think we are a bit good at it.

Rob C
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