It seems to me that Alan Zakem’s original post raises two separate issues. Any image, regardless of its medium, has some esthetic value (or, arguably, lack thereof). If offered for sale, it also has a market value (equal to or greater than zero).
The esthetic value is essentially subjective: the beholder’s eye determines how “good” it is.
The commercial value can be independently estimated, at least to some extent, using parameters such as the artist’s sales history, scarcity of the artist’s work (you may well sell better after you’re dead), size of the edition if the image is reproducible, the point-of-sale (established gallery, crafts fair), etc.—but the bottom line is ... well, the bottom line: how much money a buyer is prepared to pay the seller and the seller is prepared to accept. Where commercial value is concerned, it doesn’t matter whether the buyer and seller consider it a work of art or a work of craftsmanship or a vacation souvenir
or a pipe. The market makes an objective determination. As Gertrude Stein famously said, “the market is the market is the market.”
And I’m not persuaded that the distinction between art and craft is unambiguous even with respect to subjective esthetic value—or that it is particularly meaningful in any event. I often hear artists say the craft is a skill that can be learned and the art is an attribute that is innate, and I suppose there’s some truth in that. But the “vision” of an artist typically evolves, sometimes quite significantly; presumably, if it’s really a genetic trait, it would be essentially static. And if it changes substantially over time, that suggests to me that the artist is learning something through practice. Which sounds suspiciously craftlike.
In any event, I’m persuaded that the esthetic value of an image is fundamentally and unavoidably subjective, and that the medium is entirely irrelevant to its esthetic value. As Gertrude Stein famously said, “a picture is a picture is a picture, and it doesn’t matter what went into making it.”
Case in point:
Back in October, I noticed an unusual array of traffic signals straddling a street in the capital city of Maryland, Annapolis, while walking downtown from the hotel where I was staying, and I decided “to do something with it.” I don’t know whether the picture I produced (the first attachment below) should be considered a work of art or of craft, but it did entail some effort.
First I had to decide what the “something” was that I wanted to make the subject of the photograph—the idea behind the image. Next, I had to select the correct lens and perform the appropriate technical adjustments to the camera to include the elements I wanted (and only those elements). Then I had to wait for an appropriate group of pedestrians to position themselves in my viewfinder where I could capture them and the traffic signals at a time when the people weren’t occluded by traffic; this involved hopping out into the busy street whenever a likely prospect presented itself, while avoiding oncoming drivers and possible citation-wielding cops.
It’s not the greatest picture I’ve ever made (note: this is a subjective judgment), but I was reasonably pleased with it.
Not long ago, I decided to feed a copy of that photograph into a software tool that transforms images based on machine-learning by a “neural network” (second attachment). I made an essentially trivial and somewhat random choice about the type of transformation and color palette for the software to emit, and let ’er rip. The software did its thing without any further intervention on my part, and spit out a computed transformation of my photograph (second attachment).
I’ve shown the pair of images to a number of people (not other photographers), several of whom have spontaneously told me that they
really like the second one. I.e., the one made by the machine.
None of them has expressed a preference for the first. The one made by the artist/craftsman.
Actually, I rather like the computed one, myself. Maybe I’ll print it and hang it on the wall.
