I don't think it's the same by any means.
If your art is poor, you have less talent than someone who makes good art, and you will not be great and they may be. There's no attempt to say all art is the same or that by qualifying it as art it is rarified and perfect. A car is a car. Some are better than others, but all are cars. You're making art pretentious and denying it to all but a few who you think worthy.
Certainly not.
There need be nothing pretentious about art beyond artists' statements! (Or worse, their agent's.)
The few I think worthy; now there's a thought indeed... how come I can think of so many images that I think never could be worthy of anything at all beyond the generic title of photograph?
Like I said, before the late 50s - early 60s nowhere that I know of, outwith the US, thought photography art and/or exhibited it outwith camera clubs which probably didn't think it art either, just good or bad photography.
As suggested earlier, it strikes me as a particularly American thing to elevate almost anything to a higher level of hype than it naturally deserves or comfortably fits. Photography is one such victim, where a simple job or hobby has become messed up with all manner of nonsense to confuse, and otherwise cloud reality to the greater good of profit and commerce. And man, let's not forget ego!
I really am surprised at the idea of my denying somebody something; it's neither within my gift to give that credibilty nor to deny it; the reality is that the work is never more than a mechanically produced artifact: a photograph. Born of a camera, it bears that provenance forever. The best you can hope is that some guy with an artistic soul gets his hands on it and creates something interesting from what the camera captured. That is challenge enough, don't you think? And no, I'm not saying the camera makes the image; I'm saying the camera records. The same camera, in different hands, will do different things either better or worse.
Where the problem in just being a great or even simply a competent photographer? Why must so many crave being called artists? That, of itself, is relatively new: was a time artists were considered inferior to most tradesmen. I can give you a real life example: mine. When I moved to join my final school, I had already wanted to be a painter and, as a kid, was actually relatively good at drawing and watercolours. At the interview, when asked to state my subject preferences, art was first along with English. Unfortunately, the head honcho told my parental superior that that was silly, that I had the marks from the previous school to do much better than that, because art was a subject for those academically too poor to do "better" subjects. I think that was one of the biggest decisions ever made for me... Naturally, I didn't get to follow my love; apparently, it, art, was beneath me. Really? Funny how I devoted the rest of my post-scholastic life doing an ersatz version of it!
I have no problem living with the title photographer. Good photographer is better, and amazing would be really cool. Artist? Only in my dreams. Unfortunately, those gradings only matter within the client circle. Your wife or mother telling you you are wonderful cuts no mustard.
The best deal? Be a happy photographer, just doing what you wanna do. Leave the boxes for others who have nothing better to worry about than which one they may be thought to be inside. It's probably uncomfortably cramped in there, and be subject to violent disruptions you really can live without.
;-)
Rob