"Peter De Smidt" pdesmidt*no*spam*@tds.*net* wrote in message
...
Jan T wrote:
snip

Ignoring that the above statements involve a very controversial realist
metaphysics, why can't a painting record "what was there" as well?

Photography has one specific quality that distinguishes it from the rest of
the visual arts: the image's place in time.

Consider portrait paintings. Couldn't someone respond on first seeing a
painting, "you've captured my daughter very well! Better in fact than any
photograph of her!"

Flattery will get art nowhere.

Certainly there is a different causal chain involved. With photography the
direct causal chain of image capture is purely mechanical, as the chain
does not go through a person's mind. A person is involved (choosing the
scene, making the technical calculations...), but this is not the same
thing. With painting, a human mind is directly in the causal chain of
image capture.

The problem with photography is its blessing; while it is easy to make
innumerable different photographs from the same setting, distinguishing the
one that works and makinig it so is the virtue, craft and sometimes art.