Is photography art?

Some lunatics consider some photos to be art, but the photos must meet these conditions before they can be considered ART:

1) The photo must be of something no one in their right mind would normally take a photograph of.
(old rusty pipe sticking out of a wall, crushed beer can with the background out of focus, dead animals, etc.)

2) The camera is tilted so that the subject matter is crooked or not properly framed.

3) Any photograph that is taken in black and white automatically becomes ART.

4) A photograph of a person where part of their face is cut off, so only part of their head can be seen.

5) A photograph of a waterfall, famous landmark, or mountain scene. (using any of the above methods with this subject matter makes it even MORE art.)

6) Any photograph that is framed with a brass plaq of the photographer's name on the frame becomes instant ART, regardless of the photograph's content.

7) Any photograph made by a person who is unable to paint portraits or landscapes, make lifelike sculptures, or do any other sort of Art that requires talent, becomes ART.

I didn't see your definition, but anything lacking an act of creation is off the map as far as I'm concerned... you said it right above, a
"rallye driver" is a _skill_ (FWIW) as is a personal shopper (who should have current-good-taste/fashion sense and know their client...) but it is not art, regardless that "some" consider it to be so.

A short order cook is a production labourer.
A seamstress is a production labourer.
A wordprocessor (pers. who operates) is a labourer.
A chef might be performance, visual, olfactory and taste artist.
A clothes designer is an artist...
A writer is an artist...

A photographer (or painter) can be a labourer or artist. It's up to that individual to figure out which is most important, rewarding (in many senses of the word) to them.

Skill is skill... but art is creative endeavour.

How about the talented artist that abandons his talent and produces junk just to make lots of money.....(Picasso is a good example) Is everything that he/she produces art? Does a capable artist produce art always? Again, is the process important, or just the end result?

Very good way of putting it. Any inexperienced bafoon can point a camera at something beautiful and press the shutter button. Not everyone can paint a portrait or landscape that looks as good as a photograph. That takes talent. Art is made from talent, not machines like cameras.

No offence to you as well Chris, but this is the Usenet and people like discussion. If you choose not to read then don't.

x-no-archive: yes snip

Some photo images ARE art--surely you aren't suggesting that no photos can be art?

Just like a police artist's rendition of a criminal suspect may be a line drawing but is hardly art, some (most) photos are not art. But some of them are.

I agree with you that the majority of images are far from artistic, but if you are suggesting that NONE are art, than I think you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Of course, Pete is baiting the thread. Picasso could paint realistically. He chose to transcend the so-called natural representation of things to introduce human inspired renderings: _ideas_. Many will recall that there was in society an emerging change of perspective from a classic physical representation of things, time, ideas to a new form - from physics to art.
Picasso knew this and made an advantage of it.

To the guy who was there, and who painted the scene, they show the important things....The things that he remembers...Which is OK, because you are seeing it through his eyes....He only leaves out the things that he forgets...the things that were unimportant to him......The photograph, if there was one, would attempt to show it all...Better in some ways, but worse in others....

A border like that would be easy to produce in the darkroom, so it really didn't prove anything.....

Yes, but I am fond of annoying my musical friends by saying that music includes 4 things......Beat, Words, Harmony, and Melody...And rap has three of them: Beat, words and melody, But modern jazz only has two: Beat, and harmony....So which is more like music? (I am obviously not a lover of modern jazz....)

I didn't say it was just pressing a button. You are confusing what I said with the exaggerations of others.

Is that agreement or disagreement? You use the word "either", which implies that you are accepting what I said and adding something of your own to it.

I didn't say a photographer is not an artist. I am avoiding dealing with that question because I believe it to be an ill-defined question in the first place.

I did not say anywhere that I prefer painting to photography or that photography is not art. You seem not to be paying attention to what I am saying and are still arguing with a point that I am not making, a point that I said I want to sidestep because I think the question is ill- defined.

I addressed this elsewhere, at length.

Sure it is, because word processing includes editing, and editing involves making a choice as to how to reword a sentence to make it more clear, or more correct, or sound better. This involves some human choice, and that makes it an art. Anything two human beings can do that differs from one to the other, and that can be said to be better done by one than the other, is art. (My definition)

Painters are just spreading crap on canvas. Real art involves metal.

Sounds like good advice, but then the Usenet would cease to exist

Absolutely not. Some are art, but the vast majority of photos are not art even when they are pretty pictures (and therefore deemed "art" by whoever pressed the shutter release).

Baby is safe. Time to get rid of the old bathwater though.

New technology, same old stuff. From here on, I'll take what Plato said about photography: nothing! (Now watch someone latch onto the vector of the cave/camera obscura thing.)

John Stafford in Minnesota

Then Anika must be part of the plot....His latest photo of the polo pony had all four of his feet off the ground....(The pony's, not Anika's)

Yes, I agree with you completely. To some degree that is true even after photography.

I'm a World War I history buff, especially with respect to aviation. I have many, many published photographs from that period and also many published paintings. Unfortunately few of the photographs have stood the years very well. Most of them are not very sharp and are seriously lacking in tonal gradation and sharpness. One simply cannot see all the details he would like to see. The paintings on the other hand are still magnificent, those done contemporaneously as well as more recent works. But who can say how realistic they are? We see, for example, pilots looking over their shoulders as they circle each other in a Fokker D.VII and an SPAD XIII. The fighters are pristine looking, all the details sharp, all the colors and markings correct and "accurate," but would they actually have looked that way in combat? Comparing with the poor B

That only speaks to the photographers and painters *that you know*.
Certainly, you can accept that this isn't an exhaustive set?
I dunno. It depends on the painting. Having seen many "splatter paintings" displayed in prominent art galleries, I'd suggest that it'd be hard pressed to tell what the intention was that couldn't at least be made ambiguous by someone pressing a button to release the paint and winding up with a similar result.

Similarly, it isn't difficult to tell when an image was intentionally composed vs. when someone "pushed a button". If you have difficulty with this, I'd recommend that you attend some art shows featuring photography (my wife makes sure that I get plenty of exposure to those every year!

That's a metaphysical question.

It has "value" because people will pay money for it. It has no more intrinsic value than any other dirty envelope, obviously.

Why was a length of clothesline tacked to a wall "worth" $7,000.00? Because some "artist" well received in artsy circles tacked it there.

And it worthwhile noting that in the prephotographic eras, common people often employed portrait artists who traveled about making realistic renderings. As many of these 'artists' were considered craftsmen as photographers today are considered the same. Things really have not changed much.

Accepted. But, let's not presume that all, or even the majority of photographers are trying to be artists. So, there isn't much point to judging the works of those photographers on the basis of being art. That in no way diminishes the medium of photography as an artistic medium.
One can say the same thing of the works by artistic photographers...
Adams, Weston, and countless others. Many have imitated... few (if any)
have duplicated them. So, I'd dismiss the ability to reproduce artistic works as being relevant to this discussion.
How does this address whether the medium of photography is an artistic medium? Just as in any other media, whether an image achieves the level of art is independent of the materials or technology used to produce it.
Consider filmmaking; relatively few films would be considered works of art, but those that *would* are indisputably art. The same is true of music, painting, sculpture, etc. Why *should* photography be any different?

Ah. My mistake; I didn't know what the "JSP" meant.

Yes, but the music that really depends on words for its popularity is the folk music of the 60's....Pieces like, "Cat's in the Cradle..."

How did you get that out what I stated. Meerly pointed out if you wish not add to it, why state something is going nowhere? After all you only go nowhere when there are no contributions. Sort of like politics, if you fail to vote,...you really can not complain who the rest of us elect to be President.

To me I have tuned in and out of the dialogue, and contributed when I had something to add or comment upon. Like any other thread on the Usenet if you read the thread from start to finish there will be some dead interest spots.

Then you agree, (I presume) that the underlying engineering is art. So there exists art that is neither painting, sculpture, musical composition, literature, or dance......Why then, cannot any technical endeavor, such as the design of an electronic chassis, or the operation of a complex high energy physics machine, or the running of an automobile race, be art?

I've been thinking about this and a few other important things today. One can state that a spider has an art to wrapping its prey in a fine thread, just as it spins a web to catch the prey. Yet these things are so basic to the spiders nature that one wonders if the spider appreciates the art of doing so or for that matter has need to.

Yes....That's true....There is opera....But the words in opera are definitely not a part of the musical experience....If anything, they detract, which is why we love operas in another language.......Words are, however, an important part of popular music, and some popular songs are very beautiful. (to me, at least)

Don't feel bad there are lots of self proclaimed artists without a stitch of talent.
Maybe your ahead of them and don't realize it.

It's when the two become one "talent

And what of quality and skill? Is it correct to presume you are saying:
"the _better_ the skill of the photographer, the _higher_ the quality" then the more likely the work might be 'art'? If you are, then I must entirely disagree.